This is primarily a lore chapter: illustrations are available on the Ao3 version.
Timeline
c. 20,000 BGW
A mysterious event known to historians as 'The Cataclysm' causes the simultaneous abandonment or collapse of the advanced societies of deep antiquity. Civilization itself seems to have vanished with visible signs of human settlement on the planet absent from the archeological record for millenia after fact.
c. 18,000 BGW
Small human settlements reappear in the archeological record, though none are as sophisticated or enduring as their predecessors, and most show signs of violent destruction. The greatest concentrations are found in the Great Valley of Northeastern Sanus and in the river valleys and plains between the Lóngwáng Mountains and the Bay of Fengbo.
Sometime before 14,000 BGW
The first Faunus appear (debated, possibly earlier as many Faunus traits only manifest in soft tissue, which is not preserved, with a relative handful modfiying the basic skeletal plan enough to distinguish remains from baseline Humans).
c. 10,000 BGW
The first wave of Faunus migration outside of Menagerie begins, with war bands arriving on the southern coasts of Sanus and Anima.
c. 8500 BGW
The Great Oasis at the center of the Vacuan Desert is discovered by nomadic tribes and becomes a hub of activity, with ruins suggesting a major trading post forming soon after, known to modern Remnant as the city of Vacuo, the oldest continuously inhabited settlement on the planet.
c. 2700 BGW
The Kingdom of Heain is founded and briefly unifies the various smaller states of Eastern Anima under the rule of the Legendary Jade Emperor; though scholars debate the historicity of these claims.
c. 1300 BGW
The Kingdom of Heian loses control of the shores of Lake Matsu are interrupted by the Musean migration, as inhabitants of Western Anima rush into the territory. Western crops prove to be better suited to the region's topography, but the culturally and ethnic distinct Museans frustrate Heian's plans of expansion for centuries, as the Kingdoms become bitter rivals.
919 BGW
The Ozma Archive is created in the border regions of Heain and Musea, to maintain trade records for purposes of taxation. The archive uses a portion of its commissions to recruit scholars and explorers and compile written materials of all kinds to form the first great library of Remnant, with the first systematic written histories being composed during this period.
C. 1000 BGW
Malik the Sunderer cuts a bloody swath across the Great Desert of Western Sanus, styling himself the first King of Vacuo and unifying all the wandering peoples of the region under his banner, establishing his capital at the Great Oasis, greatly expanding the size of the city.
C. 850 BGW
King Shakir dies, ending the dynasty of Malik and the first Kingdom of Vacuo, though the city would persist into the modern day and the name of the territory would stick.
772 BGW
The War of Aquila begins, as the famed Faunus war chief enters Musean territory with an army in an attempt to extract a ransom from the Kingdom.
770 BGW
The War of Aquila ends, with the Musean League agreeing to a sum of 100 lbs of gold per year.
749 BGW
Aquila dies peacefully in his sleep. The succession crisis in his confederation was severe enough for Musea to successful end annual payments without fearing reprisal.
689 BGW
The rival Kingdoms of Musea and Heian (later West Mistral and East Mistral) are unified by the marriage of the Princess Mystra of Erato to the Emperor of Heian. The new Empire and its capital were named Mystra, in honor of its queen, but over this union would become known to the outside world as Mistral.
418 BGW
House Verdun and House Azure sign the Writ of Union, founding the Kingdom of Vale and becoming the first two Princely Houses.
414 BGW
House Oran is offered status as Vale's third Princely House after repelling a Valean invasion and killing its first King, setting the precedent for expansion of the monarchy beyond the founding Houses.
409 BGW
House Perelle, masters of the Island of Patch, join the Valean fold to secure themselves against their rivals, the Capulets, who controlled much of the coast of the Great Valley.
401 BGW
The Kingdom of Nertha is founded in the interior of Sanus by the fiefs of Spencer, Salvia, Leyen and Reiss, controlling much the of the Emerald Forest, Forever Fall and the cliffs and waterfalls near the source of the River Simes. House Dore is offered status as the 5th Princely House of Vale.
399 BGW
House Merlot is offered admission into Vale as the 6th Princely House.
381 BGW
House Capulet brings its territories and fleets into the Kingdom of Vale, becoming the 7th Princely House.
377 BGW
House Montague enters Vale as its 8th Princely House, bringing with it stable control of the mountain passes and overland trade routes to Eastern Sanus.
353 BGW
The Kingdom of Nertha is annexed into the Kingdom of Vale, on the condition that all four of its constituent feudal Lords are granted Princely Status.
348 BGW
The Beast King unifies the remaining Faunus tribes of Vale and begins agitating for concessions from the central government. Diplomats are exchanged.
345 BGW
The Beast King breaks off negotiations with Vale and begins ransacking much of northern Vale, beginning the Final Valean Feral Wars. The Faunus seize and ransack huge swaths of northern Vale, driving Human refugees into the other territories. The Central government prioirtizes the protection of the Princely domains and the poorer, rural countryside is temporarily ceded to roving Faunus.
332 BGW
At the Battle of the Galician Fields, the common soldier Arc I rallies the Valean Army to rout the forces of the Beast King, halting their advance to the Simes River and earning a Knighthood in the process.
328 BGW
Arc I is granted full command over a Valean Army to reclaim lost territory after several failed attempts by other Generals.
322 BGW
The of the Faunus tribes are captured at the Battle of Aurora Creek, and The Beast King is killed. The surviving Faunus pledge fealty to Arc I personally. Fearing the might of the combined army, the Princely Council admits Arc I as its 13th and final member, and grants him control of much of the territory he had reclaimed. The Faunus are resettled, predominantly in the newly organized Arcadia Province, largely being restricted to a militarized area known as 'The Grange.' Valean Unification is complete and the administrative divisions of its core territory would remain more or less unchanged into modern times.
275 BGW
The Destruction of Ilos begins as Vale declares war on its smaller neighbor to the north. An army of 12,000 men led by Lucian Arc is dispatched to invade Ilium.
272 BGW
Ilium is devastated and the capital of Ilos is burned to the ground. Huge numbers of Ilosians are killed or enslaved, and the remaining inhabitants are organized into a demilitarized puppet state after accepting humialiating peace terms. Tens of thousands of veterans and their families flee the broken Kingdom and make landfall in Solitas, at what would become Fort Castle. They begin their own campaign of conquest against the interior tribes to carve out a new Kingdom for themselves.
269 BGW
The Ilosians capture the underground city of M'tela, seizing control of its dust mines and subjugating the tribes of Fionn, Scythia and Icyni. The Ilosians rechristen the city 'Mantle' and establish the great stronghold of their Kingdom there, to ensure control of a vital resource and keep the indigenous Solitans in line.
97 BGW
The Emperor of Mistral and the Lord Protector of Mantle forge an alliance.
91 BGW
Argus is founded and jointly occupied by the Kingdom of Mistral and the Grand Army of Mantle as a vital trading outpost between the allies.
5 GW
Nicholas Schnee is born
4 AGW
Jessica Klaus is born
31 AGW
10/25- Mason Arc is born
32 AGW
5/7- Willow Schnee is born
12/30- Ghira Belladonna is born
34 AGW
8/11- Jacques Gelé is born
35 AGW
9/3- Estelle Pluie is born
11/25- James Ironwood is born
36 AGW
5/9-Kali Moksha is born
38 AGW
2/2- Zoroaster Ozpin is born
41 AGW
6/21- Summer Rose is born
7/28- Taiyang Xiao Long is born
8/12- Raven and Qrow Branwen are born
56 AGW
4/18- Glynda Goodwitch is born
9/11- Saphron Arc is born
12/21- Winter Schnee is born
58 AGW
4/21- Adam Taurus is born
5/4- Marigold 'Dash' Arc is born
59 AGW
4/6- Opal Arc is born (11:54 pm)
4/7- Blanche Arc is born(12:01 am)
12/20- Cinder Fall is born
60 AGW
2/29- Neopolitan is born
3/15- Mercury Black is born
7/27- Chloe Arc is born
61 AGW
12/25- Emerald Sustrai is born
62 AGW
1/6- Yatsuhashi Daichi is born
2/14- Velvet Scarlatina is born
6/11- Coco Adel is born
11/22- Fox Alistair is born
11/29- Pyrrha Nikos is born
63 AGW
1/10 Ciel Soleil is born
1/19- Blake Belladonna is born
2/12- Sky Lark is born, Neon Katt is born
3/4-Flynt Coal is born
4/1- Nora Valkyrie is born
4/14- Neptune Vasilias is born
4/20 -Reese Chloris is born
5/1- May Zedong
5/8- Lie Ren is born
5/15- Weiss Schnee is born
5/30- Cardin Winchester is born
6/4- Sun Wukong is born
7/15- Jaune Arc is born
7/28- Yang Xiao Long is born
8/21- Arslan Altan is born; Sage Ayana is born
9/18- Dove Bronzewing is born
11/11- Russel Thrush is born
64 AGW
9/5- Azora Arc is born
65 AGW
3/31- Lavender Arc is born
10/31- Ruby Rose is born
67 AGW
2/12- Oscar Pine is born
2/13- Whitley Schnee is born
78 AGW
7/15 - Jaune Arc turns 15 years old and is exiled from his family during the early stages of 'chadification'
Populations and Polities of Remnant
Remnant is a vast world that has been inhabited (though not continuously) for almost 100,000 years. Much of that history is lost to the ravages of time, but in the modern era its diverse peoples and societies have clustered around 4 (effectively 3) hegemonic powers: Atlas, Mistral, Vale, and, by courtesy, Vacuo, known collectively as the Kingdoms. For thousands of years the Creatures of Grimm limited the scope of civilization, and even after their disappearance constraints of technology and geography bounded the ambitions of even the most able conquerors. For most of Remnant's history power was concentrated in defensible city-states or well organized nomadic tribes. The Kingdoms as we know them came into their modern forms within the last milennia and only came into contact with one another in the last few centuries, during a period of expansion and imperialism that enveloped all the inhabited parts of Remnant.
The Great War was the last and most devastating conflict of this era, costing countless millions of lives and leaving entire regions effectively depopulated, and its resolution would go on to define the subsequent political, economic and cultural framework which continues to this day. Contemporary dates are conventionally noted as 'Before the Great War' (BGW) or 'After the Great War' (AGW), with the decade of the war itself entirely defined by that event (1-10 GW). In its wake, the Vytal Peace Accords -colloquially known as the 'Vytal Treaty' or 'The Treaty of Vytal' - were symbolically ratified on the first day of a new year, despite negotiations having completed several weeks earlier, reinforcing the image of a complete reordering and renewel of global affairs.
The Accords abolished the pre-existing monarchic systems of government and standardized a general democratic form of government:
-All governments would be headed by an elected Council, composed of 5 seats.
-3 'Councilors' would serve for staggered 6 year terms, with one seat coming up for election every 2 years. These Councilors were to be popularly elected by the Kingdom at large.
-2 'Consuls' would be appointed by the Councilors on an annual basis to act as Chief Magistrates.
-The holders of both offices were voting members of the Council, though custom dictated that domestic activity fell chiefly to the Councilors, while military and international dealings were overseen by Consuls.
-'The Universal Declaration of Rights' had to be affirmed and upheld by all members and all citizens of signatory states were granted full legal protection by other signatories.
-All signators would join a currency union, overseen by the Vytal Organization, which would also oversee trade and communication between the Kingdoms and outer territories.
-All settlements outside of the designated cores of the Hegemonic Powers would be granted formal independence
-The Island of Menagerie would be returned to the Faunus, who were also granted citizenship wherever they resided.
These Accords and their enforcement have radically homogenized much of Remnant's culture. The following flowering of technology that produced such innovations as the airship and the Cross Continental Communication Towers made transportation and communication between settlements cheap and easy. Living standards, life expectancy, literacy and economic growth expanded rapidly in the following decades. As the chief victor of the war, Vale became the model for most of Remnant's people; international business was conducted in Valean, and for illiterate swaths of the population education was conducted in Valean. As the language of commerce, diplomacy, higher learning and mass entertainment, Valean rapidly was adopted as the global lingua franca: many of the younger generations speak exclusively in Valean. For all its geographic and phenotypic diversity, Remnant has become a very uniform place: the overwhelming majority of human beings speak the same language (Valean) as a first or second tongue, use the Lien(Ⱡ) as their standard currency, live under democratic political institutions and communicate via the CCCT. Ease of migration means that it is not uncommon to find ethnic Mistrali living in the core of Vale, or Vacuans lounging in the heights of Atlas.
But conflict continues. While no wars between the Kingdoms have occurred since the Vytal Accords: violent crises such as the Catamaran Crisis, the Faunus Rights Revolution and the Atlesian Civil War have demonstrated that warfare has not been eliminated. Many of the promises of the Vytal Peace have been... imperfectly implemented. Slavery has been abolished, but in the remote corners outside the Kingdoms reputable firms such as the Schnee Dust Company employ contractors with creative definitions of 'free labor'. Legal discrimination against Faunus is illegal, but private discrimination is not, and even legal equality has only been kept by force of arms, which has racheted up racial resentments even more. And while the outlands beyond the Kingdoms are nominally independent, the Kingdoms have an unspoken understanding about their various colonies, allies and protectorates, and are fully prepared to use military force to maintain that understanding, whatever the residents of the outlands might want.
For all its failings, Remnant is by and large more peaceful and prosperous than it has been at any other period in its history. With the annihilation of the Grimm and the effects of the bloodline curse, most of its 1.5 billion residents live mundane and manaegable lives.
The Kingdom of Vale
Motto: "Choice Is Our Crowning Glory."
Demonym: Valean
Government: Federal Parliamentary Constitutional Republic
Capital: The City of Vale
Key Dates
- Writ of Union: March 24th, 418 BGW (Created the Kingdom of Vale as an elective monarchy headed by House Verdun and House Azure)
- Core Unification: December 14th, 318 BGW (Consolidated the Great Valley of North East Sanus as its core territory)
- Civic Charter: August 26th, 185 BGW (Formalized the rights of citizens across all fiefs and territories, abolished slavery)
- Vytal Reforms: January 1st, 1 AGW (Transitioned from a Constitutional Monarchy to a Constitutional Republic)
Population: 245,678,910 (~80 AGW)
- Density: ~528 per sq mi/ ~204 per km2
- Race: 91.2% Human, 8.8% Faunus
Land Area: 464,890 sq. miles [1,202,060 km2]
Sphere of Influence: Eastern and Central Sanus
History: The Great Valley of Northeast Sanus, for which the Kingdom gets its name, has long been a center of human civilization. Bounded by oceans to the the North, West and South, and with the might Alcyrenes guarding its Eastern Flank, the territory has strong natural defenses and access to maritime trade routes. The River Simes runs from the snowcaps of the Alcyrenes to the Sea of Marselle- straight through the Kingdom's center-and is navigable, with predictable flood patterns, making its alluvial plain an ideal location for agriculture. The river also connects the Kingdom's interior to seaborne trade. Its climate is temperate and mild; its coastal and central plains are generally separated by rocky foothills, lush forests, smaller rivers and tributaries of the Simes, creating numerous internal barriers mild enough to allow trade and communication but substantial enough to complicate conquests and foster smaller political units. Valeans are one of the oldest and most enduring cultural and phenotypic groups in Remnant, but the Valean nation has rarely been unified under a single government. Only two such states are recorded, one in history and one in legend.
The Emerald Empire is a semi-mythical polity that is hypothesized to have existed between 25,000 and 20,000 years before the Great War. Its core was in the contemporary Emerald Forest, but sites in the proper architectural style have been found across modern Vale an even extending inland across the Alcyrene Frontier, but archeologists are uncertain as to whether these ruins represent a common culture or common political organization. The few stone inscriptions that remain, etched into their monuments, are unintelligible- the glyphs are undeciphered and unrelated to any modern written language. Oral traditions, however, tell of a unified empire, propserous, peaceful and in harmony with nature, with cities, fields and forests intemingling under the care of wise and powerful men. The same legends are filled with tropes such as magic, gods, witches and monstrous beasts, however, and contemporary scholars suspect these tales to be little more than an idyllic arcadian fantasy of a lost golden age. The difficulty separating wildnerness from settlement may well be a product of millenia of encroachment, with all but the sturdiest stone structures having eroded to dust. The myth has been retold and reworked for numerous purposes, by preachers tying the fall of the Empire to the inherenty fallen nature of man, and by revanchists recalling a bygone era in a call for early Valean Nationalism, making the separation of fact and fiction so long after the event equally difficult. It is generally agreed, however, that this culture, and a few others like it scattered across Remnant, exceeded all but the most recent modern states in scope and sophistication. Then, almost simultaneously, they collapsed, without any warning beforehand or any trace left afterwards. Little is known about the event historians call 'The Cataclysm', but there would be no signs of Human settlement on the planet for millenia, and those that did eventually emerge were simple, fleeting and poor, replacing marble and brick remains with ashes and dust.
This sense that we were once more than we are and the world we inhabit is merely a hollow relic of what came before is universal to almost all Human cultures; the names of the world in countless languages are synonomous with 'fragment', 'shard', or, in our own tongue, Remnant.
Nevertheless, embers of light continued to burn in the ashes of the old world, and over the millenia smaller Kingdoms would rise and fall. These states either lacked written language or their records did not survive, but either way we know precious little about them. The ruins they left behind were smaller and shabbier than their predecessors, and while the Emerald Empire seems to have been abandoned, signs of violence are invariably found at later digs. Historians hypothesize that the period was characterized by perptual, fierce, internicene warfare, as the weapons found at these sites as a rule are so similar as to make distinguishing which side they were on impossible. Some sites would seemingly persist for a century or more and grow to become regional powers, but inevitably they collapsed, leaving only broken bones and bloodstained iron as their epitaph.
Progress was piecemeal over the millenia until about 2000 years ago, when the average size and longevity of settlements rose dramatically. This was followed by proportionately larger wars, but gradually these too faded in intensity and frequency. By roughly 1000 BGW our first written histories were being composed, giving us access to data beyond archeology, myth and conjecture. In the centuries leading up to Valean Unification the area was divided into several hundred small fiefs, which waxed and waned in influence and were in constant competition with one another.
By the 5th century BGW the two most powerful of these were led by House Verdun and House Azure. Verdun had conquered most of the southern bend of the Simes, and was the most populous and agriculturally productive fief in the valley. Azure possessed the finest heavy infantry in the valley with rigid military discipline and finely made equipment. After decades of warfare the two powers realized together no other fief could match them and negotiated a power sharing agreement which bound them and their vassals into the Kingdom of Vale, on March 24th, 418 BGW. Old fiefs were subordinated to the new monarchy and became the modern provinces.
As the Kingdom expanded particularly valuable or troublesome fiefs were offered equal status to the founders in return for their loyalty, with their masters being designated as 'Princes' rather than mere 'Lords' (though as Valean history progressed this title was rarely used outside of formal settings). The city-state of Oran brought in an unparalleled intelligence network and mastery of urban warfare, the city of Dore offered strategic control of a chokepoint at both bends of the upper Simes. Perelle offered the island of Patch and an important counterweight to the various mercantile Capulet strongholds that dominated much of the coast. Merlot's ascension came with the near total envelopment of many weaker fiefs who then surrendered without a fight on far less favorable terms. Montague sured up the frontier and brought in valuable overland trade through the passes to rival the Capulets. The Capulets brought the aforementioned port strongholds and their ascension undercut Perelle and Montague politically. House Reiss had its own coalition with Spencer, Sylvia and Leyen [The Nerthan Four] and all four were offered Princely status to avoid a costly war and put up a united front against the Faunus, who were beginning to rally after decades of displacement by the young Kingdom, under the leadership of a powerful warlord known as the Beast King. House Arc, unlike its peers, did not exist prior to the Kingdom of Vale, but the commoner Arc I had rallied a scattered and demoralized army and became a national hero after routing and capturing the army of the Beast King, so he and his descendants were granted land, title and a shot at the purple in order to prevent him from outright taking it. The survivors of the Beast King's forces were settled as serfs in the depopulated regions, as the lowest of subjects, but subjects of the Vale never the less.
Arcadia and Frontera Nord were created by the crown (the former out of the depopulated and disbanded provinces devastated by the Final Valean Feral War, the latter in a sparsely populated border area to act as a buffer against Grimm incursions) but all other fiefs pre-dated the Kingdom, though over the course of its expansion cooperative fiefs were allowed to annex and absorb their more recalcitrant neighbors. By 322 BGW, less than a century after its founding, Valean Unification was complete, and its core borders and subdivisions would remain more or less intact into the present day.
The period of Valean History between 418-322 BGW is generally defined by the Unification Wars and later the Feral Wars, but in the subsequent centuries the heartland of the Kingdom was largely pacified. There were some overseas conflicts where Vale asserted its dominance, most notably the Destruction of Ilos (275-272 BGW) which eliminated a local rival and assured Vale's supremacy in the region, but at home Vale was free to catch its breath for the first time in millenia. Domestic focus was concentrated on economic growth and internal reforms.
Vale began as a semi-constitutional monarchy, bound by custom and with a great deal of local autonomy retained by local princes and lords. The King acted as the Commander-in-Chief of the Valean Military, the ceremonial Head of State, and Supreme Justice for Vale's final court of appeals. Legislative powers were gradually ceded to a series of Councils, and most monarchs delegated extensively to their various ministers, but to some degree the King remained the nation's chief executive until the Post War Period.
The Laurel Throne was initially occupied by a mutually acceptable prince of either Verdun or Azure, but as the number of princes expanded the office of King became an elected one- though only a son of one of the 13 Princely Houses or their cadet lines was eligible. The election was first conducted by the 'Princely Council', composed of the 13 Heads of House for the families eligible for the Crown. The selection process was fraught with politicking: powerful princes would sometimes try and elect either their sons or a young cadet male rather than themselves, so their family could control the throne for decades, but the majority of the time one of the Princes themselves was selected, and the weaker the consensus the older the chosen King typically was, under the logic that such a compromise candidate could be replaced more quickly. This selection mechanism is often credited by historians as the reason why Vale had very succession crises compared to other, purely hereditary monarchies. Over the Kingdom's history 42 men would sit on the Valean throne for an average reign of 9.95 years, but the median reign was 2.8 years. As a result the strength of the King varied greatly across time- ranging from a largely symbolic position held by distinguished old noble to a hugely consequential ruler who would set policy for decades and alter the course of the Kingdom's history.
The monarchy was a core element of the government, but the stability of Vale was grounded in its other, permanent institutions. Monarchs would come and go, but councils, judges and local nobility would endure and expand their power whenever a king was weak. In 369 BGW a permanent capital was constructed with the City of Vale, to distance the king from the house he belonged to and create permanent instruments of government.
Valean Liberalization was a process that happened in fits and starts. Over the millennia Vale had developed common customs regarding the rights of citizens, general legal principles and due process, not as a result of a non-existent central authority but as a sort of common law. These rights were sometimes flagrantly violated, but the sense that these were violations of a proper order and not normal policies was widespread and enduring. Local lords still had a great deal autonomy over their subjects, but freedom of movement and competition for skilled professionals and artisans forced them to offer increasing concessions to their subjects. Just as the King had to make concessions to the Lords, the Lords had to make concessions to townships and guilds and the wider gentry, which increasingly demanded a share of political power.
By 185 BGW these forces had become powerful enough to alter the unwritten constitution, replacing it with a written constitution, the Civic Charter, which guaranteed basic legal protections for due process, property rights and limited political rights for all citizens. There were high minded reforms: slavery was abolished, all laws had to be written, ratified by a representative council and publicly displayed to be considered binding, ex post facto laws and bills of attainder were prohibited and the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man was given the place of pride in the new Charter. There were also more practical adjustments: units of measure were standardized across the Kingdom (and again, remain in place to this day, while the rest of Remnant has adopted the International Standards of Measurement), administration of the provinces became more uniform and many feudal privileges were phased out, the federal character of the Kingdom became a formal part of the government rather than a tacit principle.
Legislative power was generally divided by Councils of varying ranks and responsibilities.
The Princely Council: A Council of the Thirteen Princes. The oldest and most aristocratic of the councils, it acted as an advisory body to the King and also elected the new King upon his predecessors death. In the Civic Charter many of its powers were redelegated to the lower Councils: even the election of the King became subject to ratification, with the Princely Council 's nominees subject to approval or veto by the Council of Elders. Never the less, it retained a prestigious ceremonal role, and its members wielded wide influnce by virtue of their wealth and holdings, if not through the Council itself.
The Council of Elders: A national parliament of 100 members, which became the Federal Legislature. The King presided over the Council and acted as its 101st member, but only voted in the event of a tie. The King could veto the Council's proposed laws, but that veto could be overridden by a 3/5 supermajority had the sole power to levy taxes, and all federal ministers and magistrates had to be approved by the Council. The King could refuse to call the Council to meet, but the government could not operate for long without them. Voting rights for the election of Elders were initially restricted to members of the nobility, but over time the suffrage was expanded to include all adult males above a property threshold, which became lower and lower over time.
The Provincial Councils: Local bodies which were to Lords what the Council of Elders was to the King. With 85 examples, generalizing is difficult, but suffrage was broad, ranging from all property owning males, to universal male suffrage, to universal suffrage for all citizens in some provinces. These were the councils everyday citizens would have interacted with the most, and the ones they had the most influence over. Because of the autonomy granted to each province they held serious influence, and it was ultimately their norms and practices which would inspire the international standard that has become the dominant form of government in Remnant.
The 2nd and 1st centuries Before the Great War also represented a shift in focus- with Vale now unified and reorganized into a well defined and powerful state, its influence began to expand beyond its borders. Increased contact with Mistrali naval and merchant vessels and the rapid growth of the new Kingdom of Mantle in the far north led to a scramble for control of overseas territories. Valean armies began exerting their control over Eastern and Central Sanus, while the Valean Navy fought for control of islands, ports and choke points across the world. Vale established garrisons in Vacuo and carved out parts of Coastal Menagerie for themselves, controlling much of the territory surrounding Kuo Kuana (captured in 128 BGW). Domestically, conflict with foreign powers increased Valean Liberalism- the individual freedoms and democratic norms of their Kingdom differentiated them from their autocratic rivals and these characteristics became even more central to their national identity. However, these rights were only partly extended to the Valean colonies, and were not extended at all to conquered peoples.
Over the course of this period Mantle became increasingly authoritarian, repressing art and self expression nearly out of existence within their borders. Mistral, which had by this point forged a strong alliance with Mantle, followed suit selectively, forcing Mantle's policies on its outlying possessions. This drift towards totalitarianism, and its imposition on Valean travelers and traders, greatly aggravated most Valean citizens. This sentiment was not universally held, however.
King Domitian was the 2nd of 3 Arcs to hold the throne and the 2nd to last King of Vale. House Arc had since its inception been a power player within the Kingdom, but their relative youth as a bloodline and perceived intemperance were considered liabilities when considering who should hold the purple: the previous Arc King, August, had the benefit of inheriting the reputation and political alliances forged by his father Claude, who was a key player in the creation of the Civic Charter, and both father, son and grandfather had a reputation as fair minded and more even keeled than their bloodline's founders (none of them being 'True Arcs' as the Blessing passed over the firstborn, surviving in their more virile 'cadets'), 'rehabilitating' the House in the eyes of the other nobles. Domitian, by contrast, was as more stereotypical Arc- his accomplishments as a general endeared him to his men and his tenure as Governor of Kuo Kuana was effective, if brutal. Elected in 30 BGW at the comparatively young age of 39, it was expected that Domitian would go on to be one of the most influential kings in the history of Vale.
Unfortunately, Domitian had come to admire the Kingdoms he had been ordered to fight against. The absolute power of the Lord Protector and the extravagant lifestyle of the Jade Emperor both appealed to him- no man could match a True Arc in martial prowess, and and an official court harem would sidestep the issue of legitimacy and allow him to cherry pick a proper heir, ensuring a Blessed would always inherit the throne. To that end, he began to radically reorganize and expand the military, sent overtures to Mistral and Mantle floating the idea of a 'Triple Alliance' and began to increasingly sideline the Council and various nobles, collecting taxes directly and outright ignoring their edicts. This alarmed the Valean nobles, who were not keen on turning centuries of power sharing into an Arc Empire. Privately, they began plotting to 'remove' their new monarch, but with the army firmly on his side, rebellion seemed hopeless.
Their salvation would come from an unexpected source.
History sometimes hinges on chance, and the nature of a single man. Norman Arc was one such man. By all accounts a brilliant mind and a virile young man, Norman, bookish and reserved as he was, seemed the natural successor to his father's legacy. But while his Domitian was laying the groundwork, Norman became a key member of the plot to assassinate his father.
No one knows exactly why: some claim the boy feared usurpation from a rival heir his father would inevitably sire if he had his way; others claim he was motivated by a patriotic belief in the Valean system. Whatever the reason, in 24 BGW, Domitian, the 41st King of Vale, was found dead- the only Valean King to have ever been assassinated. The cause of death, however, was unclear at the time. The army, distraught at the untimely demise of their beloved King, made it clear they would only accept his heir as his successor. The conspirators, reluctant to set the precedent of violently seizing the throne from a Princely House, and secure in the secret knowledge that Norman was one of their own, agreed. In 24 AGW, at the tender age of 16, Norman was the youngest King of Vale ever crowned. Contemporary correspondence suggests that both officers in the army and prominent nobles thought the young, inexperienced boy would be easy puppet for their own interests.
But Norman was wise beyond his years, and rapidly acquired a power base of his own. He gained a reputation for total devotion to the wellbeing of his people: focusing on commerce and reform, walking back his father's policies and becoming a patron of the arts and sciences, negotiating peaceful resolutions to kinds of disputes that would have led to small scale wars and saving many lives in the process, even forgoing marriage in order to focus on matters of state. So beloved was the boy king that he gained the honorific 'Valerian', a title that would eventually supplant his birth name in the historical and popular imagination.
Mistral and Mantle, however, were not amused by the quiet coup d'etat, and percieving the new King as a weakling, began a series of increased provocations on Vale. Import duties on Valean goods were doubled, and continued to rise in the years leading up into the war. Unauthorized Valean vessels that entered alliance waters were routinely captured, their cargoes siezed and their crews impressed into alliance navies. Mistrali and Mantlian colonies began pressuring their Valean neighbors to abide by the alliance's restrictive cultural sensibilites. The Valeans were not inclined to comply, and began agitating for more and more aggressive retaliation. Valerian was initially able to limit these conflicts to small scale proxy wars between clients, but tensions were especially high on the Eastern Coast of Sanus. Vale had established colonies in many of the peninsulas and islands of the region, but Mistrali settlement soon followed, starting with Catamaran Island and ballooning out from there. A riot between neighboring towns on the island of Graecia escalated into a full blown war between the Kingdoms, beginning the Great War.
Valerian's accomplishments in war eclipsed his record in peace. His strategic acumen, battlefield prowess and sheer force of personality held the Valean Army and Valean People together under the onslought of two rival Kingdoms during the early yeas of the war. Once Vacuo expelled the Alliance occupiers and War Queen Hypolita forged her own covenant with Vale, the tides of war began to turn, and at the Final Battle of Vacuo, Valerian personally led his forces to victory. Rather than establishing outright Valean superiority, Valerian took the opportunity of having all four Kingdoms under one banner to fundamentally alter the political structure of Remnant. The Kings would abdicate, and no man would replace them. Democracy would take their place.
The Valean aristocracy once again took exception to this, but once again there was little they could do. The Warrior King had the support of ALL the armies who had been battle hardened by a decade long war. Valeans, already more egalitarian and democratic than other nations, viewed monarchic and aristocratic tyranny as being responsible for the war. Furthermore, Valean nobles had traditionally been warriors, carving out and protecting their own fiefs personally, so their young men were disproportionately killed in the bloodiest war in recorded history. Not strong enough to oppose the extremely popular, extremely powerful King of Vale, and with many of their heirs and futures gone, the noble houses of Vale relinquished their status, and much of their lands, liquidating what wealth they could and vanishing into obscurity. There was contemporary effort to hide which of the surviving members were the rightful heirs: every House had produced dozens of offshoot lines, which typically shared the family name, and with nobility suddenly a liability instead of an asset, obfuscation of the geneological record became common practice.
Valerian would live for 12 more years after the war, serving as head of the Vytal Organization, to give the fledgingly body legitimacy and influence that would persist into the present day, and dying as a private citizen in a new world he had built. Valerian ruled the Kingdom of Vale for 34 years, as its longest serving, and, unanimously, its best King. He was the 42nd, and the last.
But Vale continued on. Like the rest of the world, the post war economic and population boom profoundly affected Vale. Vale remains the cultural and political world hegemon in the post war period. Its highly fertile farmlands have made it a leading exporter of agricultural goods, and the cities, especially the Capital, have attracted migrants from all over Remnant. The City of Vale, which had initially been confined to the province of Lutetia, rapidly expanded to absorb or contain multiple provinces, with the city government making its host provincial governments nearly irrelevant. The increasing cosmopolitan nature of Vale's urban core has led to some political tension with the more rural and traditional areas- the cities generally favor a more expensive national government while the outlying areas support the existing Valean federalism, this being the wedge issue that defines the modern partisan split between the Reform and the Lawful Peace Party (or the 'Blacks' and the 'Greens'). Tensions between Humans and Faunus are also acute- Faunus have historically been concentrated in the province Arcadia and the coastal cities, but their sizable population has outpaced the Kingdom's overall growth because of migration, intermarriage and a higher fertility rate- about as many Faunus live in Vale as Menagerie. Vale was the first of the Kingdoms to break from the Coalition and sue for peace during the Faunus Rights Revolution, but tens of thousands of Valeans were killed in the fighting and untold trillions of lien in property damage and lost economic output have left deep scars in the psyche of many Human Valeans.
With Atlas consumed by Civil War, in the last few years Vale has become even more central to Remnant as the world's most important economy and is seen as an idyllic standard of peace- a beacon of hope for all mankind.
The Kingdom of Mistral
Motto: "Knowledge is Beauty"
Demonym: Mistrali
Government: Confederation/Dual Parlimantary Republic
Capital: Mystra
Key Dates
-Mythical founding of the First Empire of Heian: April 2nd, 2704 BGW [Historical accuracy unclear)
-Reorganization under Emperor Wu Tang: June 9th, 1337 BGW
-Creation of the Ozma Archive: February 9th, 919 BGW
-Dual Monarchy/Musean Unification: August 31st, 689 AGW
-Vytal Reforms: Jaunuary 1st, 1 AGW
Population: 365,957,314
- Density: 601 per sq. mile /
- Race: 95.3% Human, 4.7% Faunus
Land Area:608,914 sq. miles
Sphere of Influence: Anima
History: Mistral is an ancient Kingdom, but while it is not truly the oldest it is the largest, the most populous and arguably diverse, uniting many disparate peoples under its banner. The History of Mistral, like the other Kingdoms, was profoundly influenced by its geographical features. Like Vale and Vacuo, Mistral has strong, natural borders, with its hardland comprising the Isthmus of Dracona between the Bay of Fengbo in the East and Lake Matsu in the West. The isthmus is dominated by the Lóngshān Mountains, which carve numerous small valleys across the landscape. The eastern half of the Isthmus is warm and wet, with winds from the Sea of Fūjin bringing clouds and warmth that are trapped by the high peaks of the mountains. The western section of the Isthmus, by contrast, is colder and more arid, but through Lake Matsu has connections to the interior of Anima. These climatic differences would prove decisive in the colonization of the region by different peoples.
The lowlying coastal plains and valleys of the East were perfect for the cultivation of rice- which offers a higher yield than competing crops such as wheat, and can be 'double-cropped' in some regions, allowing for much higher population densities than in other parts of Remnant. For over 10,000 years comparatively large agricultural settlements were found in these areas, but expansion into the highlands and across the mountains in neighboring valleys was very slow- expansion of this civilization to the north and south was also halted by the harsh cold of the north and the drier plains of the south. Labor intensive terracing of nearby hills and mountains under the growing states in the region further expanded agricultural yields and promoted a strong, centralized organization of society. The people of Heain, as they would come to be known, would become very numerous, but their western frontier was always sparsely populated.
Mistral can be contrasted with Vale in many ways: rather than one large valley, Mistral's heartland was compromised of many smaller valleys, which were isolated from one another. While Vale had smaller barriers promoting political separation, Mistral's internal borders were harder, and different Eastern Mistrali varied phenotypically and culturally much more from their distant cousins than Valeans separated by similar distances. Rather than fragmenting into hundreds of small statelets, the people of Heian were never split among more than 2 dozen states, and by the time of the Empire had solidified into a mere 17. Furthermore, while no single Valean Fief ever had enough power to fully subdue the others, one Eastern State always held supremacy over the others. The Valley of Heian, for which the empire and its people would get its name, is far larger than any of its counterparts (more populous and massive than its next five rivals combined), and with unusually fertile soil and easy access to the sea, it quickly established itself as the economic and cultural juggernaut of the nascent Kingdom. Once its navy was large enough to have undisputed control of the Bay of Fengbo, it rapidly took control of the coasts of the Kingdom, with its armies slowly expanding inward.
The First Jade Emperor supposedly led a campaign to subdue all of Eastern Mistral as early as 2704 BGW, though the details of these exploits are lost to time. The first 11 Jade Emperors are themselves semi-mythical figures, with no contempoary records and absurd accomplishments under the names- an unbroken string of so many Kings ruling for decades each is unparalleled in recorded history and is widely believed to be a simplified and sanitized account of the Kingdom's early years. Subsequent history suggests that the dominion of Heain over its rival states was largely symbolic, with the divine Emperor receiving tribute while his vassals continued to war amongst themselves. The mountain passes connecting the various valleys were small and easily defensible- the most populous valleys near the sea were under more firm central control, but so long as taxes were paid to the Jade Throne, the Emperor generally left his lords alone to do as they pleased. Many rulers were happy to recieve imperial honors and an excuse to tax their people- during this period regional lords 'taking some off the top' of the imperial revenue was common practice. Within the valleys, highly stratified and politically corrupt despotic rule was the norm. The rugged moutains and isolated passes were favorite haunts of bandits, who formed small settlements of their own, outside the law, as the terrain made organized campaigns to eradicate them difficult. These patterns, too, would hold for the coming millenia: Mistrali society is characterized by great wealth disparities of wealth and power, with elites dominating the government in the core while a criminal underground dominated the periphery.
This loose Imperial touch would fall out of favor, briefly, with the migration of the Museans. The imperial fringes in the west were invaded by raiders and settlers from Western and Central Anima. These peoples came from settelements across Lake Matsu, and this gave them a massive military advantage: Heain had to march its armies across the harsh rugged lands of the Lóngshān, an arduous process which could take months, while the invaders could sail reinforcements and supplies to the front in days or weeks. Worse still, the new settlers came with crops like wheat and barley, which were far better suited to the western climate. Had progress not been stalled by the now absent Creatures of Grimm, this migration may have well taken place millenia prior, but as it were by 1300 BGW Heian had lost complete control of the Western backwaters, which were no longer backwaters but formidable and well connected polities in and of themselves.
Western Mistrali, at this time known as Museans, or 'Mediterraneans', as they sometimes called themselves', were distantly related to the fair people of the North and West, such as Valeans, Ilosians and Fjordsmen, though they were more closely related to the people of Central Anima and somewhat darker in complexion than their cousins further north. They would go on to found 9 city states near the coast of Lake Matsu, named after the 9 Muses, goddesses of art and creativity that were central to their culture. The perpetual threat of Imperial Invasion led to the formation of the 'Kingdom' of Musea, a military alliance that would frustate Heian's expansion for over half a millenia. Emperor Wu Tang, sensing the danger, radically reorganized the remaining realms of Heain, constructing garrisons and fortifications at the most important passes
While the rival proto-Kingdoms vied for supremacy, both faced violent incursions from powerful Faunus tribes just outside their borders, with Musea temporarily becoming a tributary state of the might warlord Aquila the Mad, (between 770 and 749 BGW), but, as was often the case across Remnant, the more powerful and consolidated the Human states became, the more Faunus were expelled from their borders. The fierce Feral Wars throghout much of this period are thought to have contributed to especially virulent anti-Faunus sentiments in the region.
By the 7th century before the Great War, however, the balance of power shifted once again. After a decisive victory at the Battle of Kikyo Pass, the young Emperor Sengoku came to Musea to negotiate peace terms. There, he supposedly came across Princess Mystra of Erato, who was renknowned as an exceptionally gorgeous and charming woman, bathing in a nearby hot spring. Smitten with the girl, the Emperor made her hand in marriage a condition of the treaty. Her father, King Rhodes of Erato, who had emerged as the de facto leader of Musea, was happy to comply, and did him one better, suggesting that a beauty such as Mystra was the rightful Queen of all Museans. If Sengoku assured their independence from Heian, Rhodes would convince the Museans to recognize Sengoku and Mystra as the Emperor and Empress of both Kingdoms. The Faunus were once again organizing and a united front of the Great Human Kingdoms would be invaluable. Whether or not Rhodes engineered the entire encounter to sway the hormonal young ruler or whether he happened upon an exceptionally lucky break is up for debate, but whatever the case Rhodes was able to convince both the Emperor and his allies, conniving his bloodline's way into the greatest Imperial Dynasty in world history.
The City of Mystra was created as a symbol of this union: an archictectural marvel, spanning the two mountains above the pass. Strategically, it controlled the major throughline between the Eastern and Western Kingdoms, but culturally it became a melting pot and an opulent center of wealth and commerce. The Chrysanthemum Palace would remain the crown jewel of Empire for the remainder of its history. Sengoku and Mystra had a fruitful, and, especially unusual for an Emperor, faithful marriage. After their nuptials, Sengoku took no other consorts, and he and Mystra both proved to be able partners, rulers and administrators, fostering trade and expanding the borders of their empire. Domestically, Heian and Musea remained distinct, but the city and the legend spread beyond the Kingdom's borders and the Empire became increasingly idendified with its growing capital, Mystra... which, eventually, morphed into the name Mistral.
Sengoku's successors would not follow their forefather's example: under his grandson, Kai, it once again became standard practice for the Emperor to maintain an Imperial Harem. This took on political dimensions. While there was no limit on the number of concubines, the Emperor would take 26 wives, each a daughter of the ruling lord of each province. The 'wife' doubled as a hostage should their family get any traitorous ideas.
As the carrot to this metaphorical stick, however, any son of one of the Emperor's wives could inherit the throne. This provided great incentive for regional lords to jockey against one another for imperial favor, so that their ambitions would center on getting their own families in power rather than breaking from the system. Hypothetically this selection mechanism would ensure only the best man would become the King, but in practice it led to massive corruption and court intrigue, as wealthy nobles and merchants would buy offices for their preferred candidates to advance their political careers. A large bureacracy, composed largely of the Emperor's legitimate and illegitimate offspring, was formed to administer the growing Empire.
And grow it did. In the subsequent centuries Mistral's armies marched across the continent to assert dominion over its neighbors. By the middle of the 200s BGW, all of Anima bowed to Mistral.
While most of the outlying territories were treated as second class citizens, a notable exception can be found in the Varun. The Bay of Varun was home to a distinct and ancient people group: the jungle landscape of the lush area near the equator fostered many diseases which Mistrali had no immunity to, making penetrating the interior or founding permanent Mistrali settlements extremely hazardous. Furthemore, separated by vast mountains and deserts from the Mistrali core, when the first Mistrali explorers reached this area it had already become a well established civilization in its own right. Varun was never unified under a single government, instead being a network of city states, such as Aryas, Kadai, N'Goto, Cholo, etc, each with their own customs, religions and languages. There was a great demand for Varuni goods in the wealthy centers of Mistral, so trade between the two centers became vitally important, but the Mistrali were able to use their influnece to play the rival cities against one another, to ensure favorable trading terms and prevent any would be unification efforts from coming to fruition. The city states of Varun would enter the Mistrali Empire first as a treasured ally, then as a largely independent vassal, and finally as an honorary 'Third Kingdom' within the empire.
If the Varun were the most favored subject people of the empire, the Faunus were the least.
Hostility towards the Faunus has not been rare in Human history, but Mistral especially deserves mention for its cruelty. Anima is thought to have been the first destination of Faunus migrants from Menagerie millennia ago, and the Faunus tribes of Anima had their own complex histories and customs... which we will never no, because the Mistrali systematically destroyed all their records and sacred sites, and punished recitation of Faunus hymns punishable by ripping out the speaker's tongues. The Faunus had been the dominant players on the continent for millennia, raiding Human settlements for mates and supplies, and vengeance was ruthless.
The Faunus were traditionally nomadic hunter gatherers or herders because their additional traits required higher nutrient levels than early agricultural staples could provide, but they were forced to abandon their ways after being conquered, resulting in widespread plagues, famines, and malnutrition. 'Faunus' became synonymous with sickness and filth, and no respectable people wanted to live near them. Many of them were sold into slavery- they were the favorite export for the hazardous mines of Mantle and its overseas possessions, and strict limits were placed on where they could live, what they could teach their children, how often they could have children and what kind of jobs they could hold.
None of this is entirely unique to Mistral, but the consistency of the abuse was. Mating with a Human was a death penalty offense for most Faunus in Remnant (although in practice this was mostly enforced on males), but under the Mistrali Empire both the Human and Faunus involved were publicly tortured before being executed, with the Faunus's immediate relatives being killed as well while the Human family paid a hefty fine. Other Kingdoms had riots against the Faunus- Mistral had state sponsored pogroms whenever they needed a scapegoat for a bad situation ( a military defeat, a natural disaster, a bad harvest, all could be blamed on the beast men). The Mistrali elite went so far as to keep Faunus in zoosand publicly display in festivals as exotic beasts.
The wealth of the Empire and the security of its core meant the noblest members of the Empire could spend their focus on various artistic pursuits, with entire families specializing in certain forms: one unique example, the Nikos family, specialized in the art of war, finding beauty in carnage and taking a more practical role in state affairs than most of their peers. Others instead focused on the commissioning of temples, and amphitheaters, the writing of great plays or love poems, or tributes to long dead ancestors.
For centuries, great advances in architecture, sculpture, literature, painting, and theatre were made- it was considered unseemly for a noble born person to do any kind of manual labor, which the servant classes were for, and prestige was garnered partly by what works of art a noble created, or at least purchased. The other major marker of status was how many other human beings they owned. Never the less, Mistral became internationally renowned for their fine silks, excellent aesthetic sensibilities, exquisite cuisine and extremely loose sexual morals.
The stereotype was somewhat exaggerated by Valean and Mantlian accounts, painting the strange Kingdom to the east as a sensual den of seductresses and degenerates, while the Mistrali stereotyped their detractors as stodgy prudes. It is also important to note that while polygamy and affairs of the heart were glorified by the Mistrali elite, everyday subjects were far more conservative and sometimes even celibate, partly on moral grounds and partly on account of not being able to afford sex slaves, which was an extreme luxury. However, there are credible historical accounts of an Emperor entertaining diplomats while a Faunus slave girl bounced on his lap, so rumors of public fornication were not completely without merit.
The diversity of a lord's harem was considered a status symbol as much as its size, with rarer, exotic 'possessions' being shown off as trophies. The Emperor was once said by a Mantlian General to have 'a cunt from every corner of the world' and even the hated Faunus were not excluded from this. Mistrali slavers paid premiums for foreign girls, and some especially impoverished groups raised their daughters to become harem girls, selling them into slavery to avoid starvation. New phenotypes even emerged as slave traders specialized in breeding rarer and rarer traits, creating new hair and eye colors in the process, such as pink, purple, blue and green shades of hair, or red, pink and purple eyes.
The Imperial Bureaucracy, often staffed by eunuchs or the illegitimate offspring of the Emperor, increasingly took on the responsibility of running the Empire, while their ruler remained as a national symbol of divinity and debauchery. Frequent gladiatorial games and chariot races, as well as minimal grain subsidies, kept the poor surrounding the capital entertained, but the imperial excesses were funded by high taxes on the provinces and conquered territories, and someone had to keep the money flowing.
The Empire began to expand beyond Anima in between 200-100 BGW, establishing outposts in Vacuo and parts of coastal Menagerie alongside other colonial powers. While initially small scale wars were fought between all three powers, in the century leading up to the Great War Mistral forged an alliance with Mantle, exchanging resources for guidance in settling the harsh cold of Northern Anima. The City of Argus was established by Mistral, with a large garrison of Mantlian troops, to serve as a joint control on the increasingly important trade between the Kingdoms.
Around the same time, Mistral increasingly came into conflict with Vale: the newest generation of Mistrali Colonies were founded on the islands, inlets and peninsula of Eastern Sanus... exactly where the Valeans were setting up new colonies. After a few decades of proxy wars and near misses, a conflagration on the island of Graecia sparked a chain reaction around the world: The Great War.
Mistral dragged Mantle into the war and at first experienced great success, pushing the Valeans back to the Alcyrenes and seizing many of their overseas territories. However, with the expulsion of Alliance Forces from Vacuo, Mistral was cut off from a major supply of dust, leaving its army undersupplied and overextended. Vale quickly recovered much of its former territory and the Mistrali took massive losses. The high death rate and economic toll let to domestic unrest and several uprisings, diminishing Mistral's value as a player in the war, and though their forces did rally for the Vacuan Campaign they were crushed alongside their allies in the Final Battle.
The Jade Emperors, who had ruled Mistral in one form or another for nearly three millenia, were removed from power. Democracy was instituted and slavery was abolished. Territories that had been under the thumb of the empire for centuries became independent, with even the Varun choosing to go their own way. Increased autonomy was devolved back to the provinces, but the division between local and national power remains more poorly defined in Mistral than in Vale. Racial tensions between the newly emancipated Faunus remained extreme, and an attempt to expel all Faunus from the Kingdom's territory in 54 AGW was the inciting incident that sparked the Faunus Rights Revolution. The war devastated the world economy but Mistral in particular, with massive street battles between rival militias and gangs that parts of the Kingdom have never recovered from. Mistral remains the most popopulous Kingdom and retains a great deal of international clout, but Mistral remains characterized by division, disparity and strife, and a gnawing fear that its greatest days may be behind it.
The Kingdom of Atlas
Motto: "We Create Our Future"
Demonym: Atlesian; Mantlian (archaic/regional)
Government
- Provisional Oligarchic Military Dictatorship (de facto)
- Unitary Parliamentary Constitutional Republic (de jure)
Capital: City of Atlas
Key Dates
- Founding of Fort Castle: December 7th, 272 BGW
- Capture of M'Tela: June 20th, 269 BGW
- Vytal Reforms: January 1st, 1AGW
- Creation of Atlas: February 29th, 32 AGW
Population: 164,204,391 (census data, 75 AGW); ~155,000,000 (Vytal Organization estimate, 81 AGW)
- Density: ~824 per sq. mile /318 per km2
- Race: 95.8% Human, 4.2% Faunus
Land Area: 288,000 sq. miles
Sphere of Influence: Solitas, Hercule, New Ilos, Argus (Authorized military bases to secure trade routes with Vacuo, Vale and Mistral respectively)
History: Atlas is by far the youngest of the 4 Kingdoms: its predecessor, Mantle, existed for mere centuries in recognizable form, unlike the millenia of the other Kingdoms. Never the less, Atlas and Mantle before it have played a crucial role in world histroy during their short time on the stage.
The people who would become Mantlian had an older, more storied history. Solitas is by far the coldest and least hospitable continent on the planet, and its tundra has always been sparsely populated. Solitan tribes have inhabited the region continuously for thousands of years, however, and due to the high latitudes, low levels of UV exposure and extremely limited sunlight during the winter months the people of the interior are noted as being extremely fair, with pale skin, white hair, and light blue eyes being nearly ubiquotous in the far north, though costal peoples were more populous and more closely related to the peoples of Northern Saunus and Anima. Tribes like the Helea, Scythians, Fionn and Icyni maintained cultural continuity but few large settlements, often stockpiling what they could for winter during the summer months, where days are long and parts of continent are lush. The great exception was the shrine at M'Tela. Deep in the interior of the continent, M'Tela was an underground city built around a rich vein of dust. Too cold to support agriculture, M'Tela remained a refuge for nearby tribes during the worst winter storms- when all else failed all tribes could retreat into embrace, deep underground and warmed by dust fueled fires.
Only fragments of the original tradition survive, but early dust extraction was limited, and highly ritualized. This likely had practical motivations- the dust of M'Tela was unusually potent and extremely volatile, so mishandling it could set of a chain reaction that could kill hundreds and bring down large parts of the catacombs. However, it also seems to have had religious connotations- only 'priests' could extract and handle dust, and dust either seemed to be worshipped directly as a divinity, or indirectly as the gift of a benevolent earth goddess, whose bosom was M'Tela and whose live giving milk was the stream of dust that flowed from it. These practices were cracked down on after the Ilosian Conquest, so we don't know for certain, but archeological finds suggest the excavation of M'Tela was underway at least by 1400 BGW, though the site may be far older than that.
The Ilosians would turn Mantle into the Kingdom history remembers. Ilium was a proto-Kingdom, just North of Vale. Separated by a fairly narrow channel, after Valean Unification there was talk of incorpating their neighbor into the new Kingdom, but after a brutal war of conquest from 275-272 BGW Ilium was devastated, its capital destroyed, and its surviving people reduced to a demilitarized vassal of Vale. Tens of thousands of citizens, particularly veterans and their families, fled rather than accept subordination, and made landfall in Solitas on December 7th, 272 BGW. The settlement, creatively named 'Fort Castle', was an excellent natural harbor that was a favorite resting place of Fjordsman and Solitan pirates... who were not happy with the new settlers seizing their territory. Seeking a more defensible location, the Ilosians scouted out the area, eventually learning of the settlement at M'Tela.
After learning about the tribe's customs and the site's nature, they made their move. It was decided to launch an attack on the Summer Solstice- the city was used as emergency shelter during the winter, but during the summer months the tribes were dispered gathering resources, and solstices were holy days were the priests who oversaw the city would be occupied with religious fervor. The surprise attack worked, and the defenders of M'Tela were quickly overrun by the Ilosian army. By the time the tribes rallied, M'Tela was an impregnable fortress well able to put its vast dust reserves to good use. Realizing that war would entail massive losses and the potential destruction of their holiest of holies, the tribes one by one began to surrender. Those who surrendered voluntarily were ordered to pay massive annual tributes in food and supplies to the city, which the Ilosians rechristened 'Mantle'. Those who resisted this new order were captured and enslaved, forced into backbreaking labor in the mines they had once called home.
Mantle was simultaneously a martial and a slave state. Hypothetically, all members of society were bound to all in a compact of mutual service, but some servants were more servile than others. Mantle was governed by a military junta- the early conquerers were an invading army and after the failures of Ilium were disinclind to establish any 'civilian rule'. In theory meritocratic, power and responsibility were delineated by military rank, with the 'Lord Protector' acting as the highest authority in the land. All advances in rank were conducted by a council of higher ranking members of the hierarchy- 'privates' were selected from cadets by 'sergeants', who were themselves selected for advancement by 'lieutenants' and so on, with the sole exception being the 'Lord Protector' himself, who was selected by the General Staff and Admiralty Board from among their own number, to serve for life.
Housing, income, occupation, even marital partners were all dictated by various staff committees- no individual citizen was afforded a private life or private property, though status and privileges varied greatly among ranks. Only two kinds of people were allowed a tombstone or physical memorial in Mantle: men who died in battle and women who died in childbirth, each having given their life for the preservation of the state. The number of children a couple were expected to produce varied based on conditions of the time, but reproduction was for the creation of new citizens and not personal pleasure: a couple may have been expected to produce a dozen children in an expansionary period but forbidden more than one in times of famine. Personal romantic factors were rarely considered in matches, and divorce was only granted in circumstances of infertility or personal disgrace, with the spouse in good standing reassigned to another match. Polygyny was sometimes practiced, though only in times when war had depleted the number of male citizens, as sexual resentment and deprivation among the ranks was considered an unnecessary source of tension, and adultery was considered grounds for demotion.
Proportions varied across time, but among citizens, the enlisted ranks outnumbered the officer class from between 5:1 and 10:1, but the vast majority of people within the junta were non-citizens, at any point outnumbering the Mantlian Citizen population from 3:1 to 8:1. These subjects, more or less openly reduced to the status of slaves, were used as disposable labor for vast public works projects, to be expended like so many tons of iron or carats of dust in the completion of a given task. The people of Mantle had a more sophisticated understanding of dust and dust manipulation, having benefitted from long contact with the complex civilizations of Sanus and Anima, but part of the reason they surpassed the Solitans in infrastructure and scope so quickly is they were far more willing to sacrifice untold numbers to build their public works. The subject population often failed to replace itself, and early dwindling led to a mass demand for new bodies, purchased from the existing markets, initially from Anima but predominantly from the deserts of Vacuo in the years leading up to the Great War.
The Mantlian Hierarchy was not purely racial- those born to parents of high rank could disgrace themselves and be sent into the slave population, or never allowed to advance past the enlisted ranks, and discrimination against the people in bondage was not categorical. Administrations varied in policy- unranked citizens who displayed unusual ability or leadership potential were either culled as potential nuclei of discontent, or allowed to rise and absorbed into the citizen body. While Ilosians and their descendents dominated the General Staff, officers of Solitan and Vacuan ancestry, alongside various other people groups of Remnant, could be found in increasing numbers as the centuries went on. The Faunus were the great exception to this rule- they were never promoted and were invariably at the bottom of the pecking order.
By the turn of the 2nd century BGW, the Kingdom of Mantle had emerged as a regional power, but it was unable to compete with Vale or Mistral economically or technologically. This later development was especially concerning, as Mantlian dominance of Soltias was predicated on their technological superiority over the rest of Solitas- as Vale and Mistral began expanding their overseas presence it was feared Mantle might suffer the same fate. The rigid conformity of Mantlian society and the limited contact with the outside world was not conducive to innovation, partly by design, but without some kind of reform the Mantlian order could not survive.
The solution was conceived by Lord Protector Charles Atlas, a reform minded Admiral who came to power in 181 BGW and a student of the recent Civic Charter in Vale. Atlas believed that Mantle's regimented society could not survive as it was, and that to modernized they would need foreign ideas and free labor. "You cannot force men to think." To revitalize the Hierarchy, Atlas extended citizenship to an unprecedented number of subjects, and began easing the burdens placed on the unranked population. He also opened up trade, opening up Fort Castle as a special economic zone, selling Mantlian dust directly to foreign merchants, and contracting out Mantlian engineers to help create new mines overseas, with a share of all profits going to Mantle.
Using this new reserve of foreign currency, Atlas offered great sums and high status to any inventor who could solve various technical problems- railroads and locomotives for faster overland trade between Mantle and Fort Castle, economically viable greenhouses in the Solitan winters, better ventilation for the mines, etc. Between 181-164 AGW, more than 3 dozen such prizes were awarded, and thousands of new citizens migrated to Mantle, turning the Kingdom into a world leader in manufacturing and engineering.
Traditionalists within the Hierarchy were concerned with this new influx of ideologically impure citizens, but were fairly impressed with the new technology such as heavy artillery and smoothbore rifles. Under pressure from these elements in the Hierarchy, the newcomers were settled above Mantle, in a permanent surface settlement their innovations made possible- a small city known as Alsius. The Mantlian Traditionalists looked down on mercantile and menial work, which was to be outsourced to the new Alsians and the non-citizens, respectively, with the Alsians occupying a tolerated mid-level in the hierarchy.
Lord Protector Atlas was assassinated in 164 BGW after tentative plan to extend citizenship to all of Mantle in a series of even more radical reforms, but his successors did not discontinue his policies, and in the coming centuries a reformed Kingdom would rename itself in his honor.
Mantle was a late entry to the period of overseas expansion, but it would establish naval bases across Remnant, as well as garrisons in Vacuo and Menagerie, and after a few intermittent wars it established itself as the undisputed master of all of Solitas. In 117 BGW Lord Protector Johan River established an alliance between Mantle and Mistral, exchanging Mantlian expertise in creating habitable structures in the harsh winter of the north of Anima in return for trade concessions and a joint presence in what would become the city of Argus. However, in 104 BGW, Mantle would be wracked by the most severe slave uprising in its history. When the dust had settled, Lord Protector Frederic Stahl had come to power, and his solution to the problem of rebellion was the complete suppression of individual expression.
Mantle banned all languages except for formal Ilosian, burned books, destroyed works of art, and even limited the kinds of clothes and colors its subjects were permitted to wear. It also demanded its allies and colonies comply. Mistral acceded to its demands, but only in the outer territories, which Mantle accepted. Mantlian troops were allowed to enter some Mistrali possessions to 'enforce' these new policies.
This led to tension with Vale, which was exacerbated in 24 BGW, with the death of King Domition. The Hierarchy admired Domition for his achievements in battle and were interested in his proposed 'Triple Alliance', and when these offers were revoked by his son and successor they suspected foul play. During the Great War, Mantle was happy to join Mistral against Vale, seizing some peripheral Valean islands and portions of Menagerie.
Mantle had an elite, well equipped army and navy, considered the finest in the War, but their comparatively small numbers limited their effectiveness in such a vast conflict, and ultimately Mantle would lose the war. Several Faunus units would distinguish themselves in the conflict, weakening existing prejudices against them to some extent.
With the abolition of the military junta, Mantle was in disarray. The city of Alsius, which had fallen into disfavor for the last hundred years, gradually resurged as the dominant economic, political and cultural force in the post war Kingdom. New innovations, such as those of famed explorer and entrepreneur, Nicholas Schnee, radically expanded the Mantlian Economy, and between 20-40 AGW the Kingdom experienced the 'Atlesian Economic Miracle', with massive industrialization, explosive natural population growth and extensive migration. Assembly line production, electrical equipment and appliances, the automobile, airships, the Cross Continental Communication Tower System, and countless other technologies came onto the scene in a remarkable boom, making the Kingdom the engine of the global post-war expansion. People flocked to what had once been barren wasteland: The Twin Cities became the first Gigalopolis in Human History- home to over 100 million souls. Anything seemed possible. Atlas itself was raised to the sky in a demonstration of the power of anti-gravity dust, dwarfing the natural floating islands of Lake Matsu to become a mountain in the sky, the unconquerable citadel, the highest splendor of Human achievement. It was a time of hope, optimism and prosperity.
Growth began to slow in the 50s AGW, which inflamed previously muted tensions between the new capital of Atlas and old capital of Mantle below. When times were good the gulf between high and low did not seem so insurmountable- when jobs began drying up resentment took its place. Mantle had always been densely populated, but it was small compared to the other Kingdoms. The rapid development and economic growth attracted huge numbers of migrants to the new Kingdom, some of whom rose to high levels in Atlesian society while Mantlians who had lived in the Kingdom fell behind. Many of the migrants did not rise, however, and both native and immigrant Mantlians began to feel that the other group was deliberately hampering their progress (which became self fulfilling prophecy). The close proximity of so many disparate groups and the boiling over of historical hatreds and greivances caused a great deal of turbelance- and no emnity was more severe than between the Humans and Faunus. Faunus had been kept at the lowest rung of Mantle's old hierarchy for centuries- but now a small number of them began to climb, leaving their benighted 'betters' behind. More distressingly, Faunus were disproportionately attracted to the hard labor of the growing mines and factories, undercutting Human wages and displacing Humans from certain neighborhoods. The relaxation of old taboos led to increased interracial relationships, which almost always produced Faunus children.
While the paranoia was not as severe as in Mistral, fear spread that Faunus would inevitably replace Humans if allowed, and across Atlas there were increasingly discriminatory policies to prevent this. Hotels, stores, workplaces, hiring boards and entire even city wards began to prominently display the phrase 'No Faunus'. There were elements of the Atlesian political elite that resisted this trend, for philosophical and pragmatic reasons: some believed in Vytal Principles of Equality while others saw the Faunus as a cheap and valuable source of labor. But, with the labor glut caused by the general downturn, and the disruptions being caused both at home and abroad by disullusioned Faunus (strikes, protests, riots) this latter base of support gradually eroded as the fateful date approached. When Mistral order all Faunus within its borders to leave immediately, Atlas stood by it's allies right to do so- setting off the powder keg that became the Faunus Rights Revolution.
In some ways Atlas faired better than its fellows- it emerged as the leader of the Coalition of Kingdoms, which was organized to put down the uprising. Atlas also drew on Mantle's old martial tradition, raising the largest army in Remnant, largely subduing its own internal unrest within the first year of the war, and supplementing the forces of the other Kingdoms with its own.
In other ways Atlas got the worst of the war. The Faunus strategy was assymetric- Faunus were scattered throughout the Kingdoms and involved in many of their crucial economic activities. Faunus militias sabotaged infrastructure like roads, railways, damns, power generators, mines and ports. For a Kingdom situated in a very hostile environment and heavily dependent on its infrastructure, this was disastrous. Most Atlesian casualties were not the result of combat, but the result of food shortages, power outages, exposure- etc, making the exact tally of the war dead controversial. The affect of the war on international trade was especially damaging.
Atlas was not in a position to produce its own food- its greenhouses were wholly inadequate to feed its massive population. The Atlesian Economy was dependent upon the export of its Dust, minerals and technology, and the import of food and scarce raw materials. Throught the war, Faunus dockworkers and sailors seized or sabotaged several major ports, and Faunus militants regularly employed pirate style tactics, ambushing ships in various straits in order to seize their supplies. Atlesian Naval Forces were spread thin trying to protect their lifeline, when the Allied Free Faunus launched a co-ordinated assault on Fort Castle, the largest port connecting the gigacity of the interior to the outer world. Fort Castle had been contested internally by local milita for years, but it was now firmly in the hands of the Faunus. Mistral had been badly damaged by internal chaos, Vale was already floating the possibility of armistice, and the government of Vacuo was a non-entity which had only been a symbolic participant in the war effort. The smaller states were in no position to continue the war without the support of the Kingdoms. If Atlas fell, the Coalition would collapse. And if Fort Castle was held, Atlas would starve. After three years, this would be the decisive moment.
Unfortunately for the Coalition, Atlas set itself up for failure. While the martial spirit of old Mantle was alive and well, the military knowhow was not. Mantle was largely demilitarized after the Great War, and its new generation of Generals were academics and bureaucrats. While it was able to quickly raise, supply and organize a large army, Atlas could not overcome the deficits of its Officer Corps as easily. Throughout the war, Atlas had mismanaged the war effort- it had telegraphed manuvers in a way that let the Faunus predict their every move, it overcomitted to indefensible positions while shortstaffing vital ones, because there was no way those mutts could possibly take a city as important as Fort Castle. It treated a guerilla war like a conventional war, and committed atrocities like the carpet bombing of civilian population centers, out of carelessness and incompetence more than malice. The Atlesian General Staff repeatedly and consistently underestimated their opponents, and Fort Castle was the pinnacle of their ignorance.
The grand plan was to feint an attack from the sea while Atlesian Special Forces infilitrated and sabotaged the artillery batteries guarding the city, then to overwhelm the ground defenses with sheer numbers in a night ambush. What this plan missed was that many Faunus had night vision. Fighting them in the dark, on their own barricades, played right into their strengths was a recipe for slaughter, which is exactly what happened. The Coalition Army lost 4 divisions in a single day, and most of its highest ranking officers, who were directly overseeing the attack and were either captured, fragged by their own men, caught in a mortar explosion, or trampled in the retreat, depending on which officer and whose version of the story you believe. A rearguard action by the ASF prevented an even worse rout and allowed some of the Army to escape, but the Coalition was now leaderless and demoralized, and the remainder of the war was spent in brief skirmishes between peace negotiations.
What is especially tragic about the massacre at Fort Castle is how preventable it was. Atlesian veterans were fully aware of the enhanced of the Faunus- Special Forces had even successfully weaponized them, employing flashbangs and ultrasonic air canons to turn this asset into a crippling liability. These tactics had proven invaluable in the various urban warfare settings earlier in the war, providing the Coalition with some of their key initial victories. But, this was improvised on the front, and the General Staff had nothing to do with it. Worse, the ASF knew the Faunus had overextended and the Coalition Navy could easily blockade them, stranding their largest single force behind enemy lines with no possibility of resupply. Surrounding Fort Castle for a month or two would have them starved out, or at least force them into abandoning their position to try and break out of the encirclement. But, the damage waiting would have done to the Atlesian Economy was considered greater than the potential risk of an attack, and the rest was history.
Two other figures of historical note were present at Fort Castle, serving as junior officers on opposite sides of the war: James Ironwood and Ghira Belladonna. Belladonna would become the Supreme Leader of the White Fang after the 2nd Treaty of Vytal, and Ironwood would become the most pivotal figure in Atlas's recent history.
2nd Lieutenant was the CO of a platoon of ASF forces initially deployed to soften up Fort Castle, and later was at the front of the rear guard. Ironwood's delaying action saved thousands of Atlesian troops, though his unit took overwhelming casualties and he was greviously injured in the fighting, losing much of the right side of his body. Through sheer willpower or dumb luck, it didn't kill him. The lieutenant was stabilized by his soldiers and brought back to Atlas, where he recieved experimental prosthetic enhancements from an up and coming inventor. While out of action for the rest of the war, by the time Ironwood recovered he found a Kingdom with a leadership vacuum where he was a national hero. The Atlesian General Staff had either been killed, captured or discredited during the war, and many Atlesian and Mantlian families considered him personally responsible for the return of their fathers, husbands and sons. The Atlesian Special Forces, for their comparative success in the war, were granted increasing control over the military. None were promoted as rapidly as James Ironwood, who jumped from 2nd Lieutenant straight to Colonel. Within the ASF was a faction that wanted to remake the entire military apparatus of the Kingdom to ensure the disaster at Fort Castle could never happen again, and they saw the young war hero's rising political capital as a valuable asset to achieving that end.
The lessons were family simple.
The Faunus were able fighters and strategists and a vaulable part of the economy, so screwing them over ought to be kept to a tolerable minimum.
The Faunus had successfully cut trade routes by land and sea... but not air. Atlesian Command had commissioned a half dozen expermiental 'Flying Fortresses' before the war- large, durable anti-grav airships that could act as a mobile base of operations. They had proven very successful at circumventing Faunus positions during the Revolution, but their were too few to turn the tide. Atlas now put its full industrial might into creating the most powerful airfleet in the world, with dozens of state of the art Flying Fortesses and thousands. of smaller gunships and troop carriers- Atlas was a floating citadel, and so long as they maintained control of the skies they could never be touched.
The Atlesian Command had failed spectacularly because of the divorce between command and combatants, and the total inexperience of their officers. So the Officer Corp was rebuilt from the ground up- OCS was revamped and a new military academy -Atlas Academy- was created to train an elite new corps. Colonel Ironwood was one of the first instructors: by 64AGW General Ironwood was the Academy's Headmaster. While at Atlas Academy, Ironwood cultivated close relationships with his most promising students, who invariably went on to high positions themselves. This gave him increasing clout with the younger officer corps as well as the general public, transforming him from a valued member of the new ruling faction to its heir apparent. In 72 AGW Ironwood was appointed Consul, alongside his former commanding officer from the ASF, General Klaus Elfenbein.
Ironwood also proposed his own reforms to the military: his influence resulted in an increasingly mechanized armed forces, with the commission of mass produced battle droids such as the AK-130, the AK-200 and the AP-290 mech suit platform, in order to miminize the exposure of Atlesian soldiers to combat.
While popular, the reforms of the new regime were not without their downsides. The higher tax burden required to sustain such a large military force put a damper on the Kingdom's economic recovery, and the large military contracts awarded to well connected firms created an even greater disparity between the haves and the have nots, and accusations of favoritism and corruption- especially regarding major players like Braires Arms and the Schnee Dust Company. Other players on the world stage were also increasingly disturbed
However, by the middle of the 70s AGW the military began a second wave of expansion despite widespread sentiment that some downsizing was in order. Ironwood and his closest allies began making vague claims about a shadowy threat far greater than any other the Kingdom had ever faced, and started funneling large sums to secret projects that would combat this threat. It is not publically known what this threat was, but the evidence provided must have been compelling to the Council, because in 77 AGW not only did they approve the General's requests, they took the unprecented set of awarding him both Consular Seats, giving him unprecedented authority to continue his program.
The situation was tense, but while the Atlesian population was strained by higher taxes and stricter discipline, there was still general faith that James Ironwood could be trusted, and on December 7th, 77 AGW he promised that Atlas would be sufficiently mobilized to announce the nature of their enemy.
On December 7th, Atlas Academy was bombed, and the Council Chambers were infiltrated by an unknown assailant. The Councilors were killed, Ironwood and most of his confidants were killed, the symbolic halls of Atlesian order and stability were shattered. Worse, no one seemed to know what threat was about to be revealed, or who was responsible for the attack. In the confusion, the Officer Corps landed on the theory that a disgruntled enlisted man had disabled the Council Security and smuggled explosives into the academy, and conducted invasive mass searches of Atlesian personnel, eventually settling on Lance Corporal Miles Leblanc and Gunnery Sergeant Shawn Kerry, who were executed without trial.
This infuriated the already stressed and demoralized enlisted body, whose pay had been cut and whose relatives were disporportionately effected by the increasingly heavy handed economic policies of the regime. Mass protests calling for new elections erupted in Mantle and Atlas as the new Command oriented itself in a clumsy and distressingly authoritarian fashion. When these protests turned violent, and sometimes before, soldiers were ordered to break them up. Many refused, and joined the rebels in a mass mutiny. The most militarized society in Remnant now had its guns pointed at each other. The loyalists maintained control of Atlas and the vast majority of fleet and mechs, but Mantle and many outlying settlements fell in the hands of the rebels, who organized themselves into a loose collection of militias known as 'the Reds'. The loyalist faction, colloquially called the Blues, began besieging strategic parts of the Kingdom in order to ensure to continued flow of vital resources to the City of Atlas- the Reds have done everything in their power to deny them these areas, and develop the means to circumvent the great defenses of Atlas. And the rest of the Kingdom is caught in the middle.
The Kingdom of Vacuo
Motto: "Those Who Live By The Sword Die By The Sword"
Demonym: Vacuan
Government: Anarchy/Adhocracy
Capital: The City of Vacuo
Key Dates
-First Oasis Settlement: c. 8500 BGW
-Malik the Sunderer creates the first Kingdom of Vacuo: c. 1000 BGW
-Shakir the Steadfast dies, ending the first Kingdom: c. 850 BGW
-Foreign Garrisons Expelled: September 14th, 5 GW
-Vytal Reforms: January 1st, 1 AGW
Population: ~39,000,000
-Density: ~307 per sq. mile/ 119 per. km
-Race: ~80% Human, ~20% Faunus
Land Area: 127,000 sq. miles
Sphere of Influence: N/A (Politically), Western Sanus (Culturally)
History: Vacuo is the most ancient Kingdom, and simultaneously the least... kingdomlike... of the Kingdoms. The city itself has been inhabited in some way or another foe over 8 millennia, but only briefly has the Kingdom ever been politically unified.
Vacuo is centered around a massive, once lush Oasis in the center of the Western Desert of Sanus (or 'the Vacuan Desert'). Surrounded on all sides by flat, easily observable terrain, and well endowed with the goods necessary for life, Vacuo was a hotspot for early humans looking for refuge from the Grimm, as they could see any beasts coming from a long way away and could more easily ready a defense. The Vacuan Desert has its own unique threats, such as dangerous wildlife and freak sandstorms,but these too were boons: tracking and hunting these creatures proved a dangerous but reliable way for hearty tribes to secure food in an otherwise barren desert, and the sandstorms would regularly expose veins of dust and ore close to the surface, allowing for migrants to easily collect them and bring them back to the Oasis. There are smaller oases scattered across the desert, but 'the Oasis' always refers to central pillar of Vacuan civilization. With defensible borders, fertile land, and a ready water supply, early Vacuo was attactive to settlers, but even migratory desert tribes needed a place to trade and resupply. The Central Oasis was the place of choice for commerce, and it benefitted from all the resources of the surrounding desert. Vacuo was so attractive that it was settled multiple times- waves of migrants, hearing of the lush paradise in the desert, and often fleeing the destruction of the Grimm, made their way to the settlement. This constant population churn is one of the proposed reasons why it was so difficult to maintain a permanent political structure; a more popular one is the fusion/fission nature of the nomadic groups. Vacuan Tribes regularly scatter to collect different resources and gather at central locations to trade with one another. Traveling the desert alone is perilous but if you know the terrain and can get a small group traversing it alone is doable- making it trivially easy for dissatisfied underlings to slip away during the night. Vacuan tribal leadership is inherently unstable and driven by charisma and compromise.
The city is a bit more stable, but it is also reliant upon the tribes for Dust metal, and access to foreign goods. Any attempt to regulate the tribes risks angering the hardy people who supply your weapons. The disparate factions within the city also prevent unity- mutiple distinct cultural groups, multiple different guilds and merchantile interests large enough to hire their own private security forces, and a rough and tumble population with shared cultural esteem for self reliance, independence and 'shanking whoever the fuck thinks they can tell us what to do' means would be Vacuan rulers tend to be... shortlived.
The exception that proves the rule is Malik the Sunderer. A charismatic nomad himself, Malik spent years breaking the Tribes to his will before steamrolling the city. He and his descendents kept a massive reserve on dust on hands at all times and even they only had nominal control over the outlying groups. Malik gave Vacuo its name with his dynasty, but after 150 years even the most arduous labors could not hold the Kingdom together, and the government collapsed.
Vacuans do have non-violent methods of dispute, although a capacity for violence is crucial for self defense. When two parties come to a disagreement, and realize the costs of fighting outweigh the potential rewards, they have traditonally turned to an Arbiter to settle the dispute. Arbiters are essentially judges, individuals deemed impartial and wise by all parties invovled, and their word is law. Arbiters held no formal power beyond their own sword and reputation, and the title was not formal or permanent, but refusing to obey the edict of an Arbiter you yourself had selected is the quickest way to become a pariah in Vacuan culture. Arbiters were sometimes selected for longer ventures- overseeing an alliance, commanding joint forces, etc, and those who were deemed competent to arbitrate in one case were typically selected by many claimants. Respected Arbiters held immense informal power and influence and were the closest most Vacuans came to a permanent ruler.
Vacuo never expanded beyond the Desert, and its comparative isolation made it vulnerable to foreign armies once they were advanced enough to enter. Neither Mantle, Mistral nor Vale were able to dominate the entire region, but the city itself and many other key Oases fell under foreign control in the centuries before the Great War. Their natural resources were exploited, especially by Mantle, causing environmental damage to the Oasis that has never been recovered from, and Mistral and Mantle carried off many of their people as slaves. However, the foreign Kingdoms also brought considerable populations to Vacuo- establishing permanent colonies that would gradually integrate into the host Kingdom's culture, providing the most recent wave of migrants.
Vacuo was initially nuetral in the Great War, and did nothing as the Valeans were pushed out by the Alliance. However, as the Alliance became more and more demanding the Vacuan people began to sense permament danger- if the Alliance defeated Vale, there was no other power on Earth that could stand against them, and eventually they would control all of Vacuo as well. Swayed by the rhetoric of the Arbiter Hypolita, the largest Vacuan force ever assembled forced the Mistrali and Mantlian garrisons out of the desert and formed a Covenant with Vale for the duration of the war.
Vacuo, for obvious reasons, was never a naval power, and their ragtag army saw very little foreign combat, but depriving the Allies of the dust reserves of the Vacuan Desert, while Vale's navy choked their trade routes, was a mortal blow to the Alliance war effort. In the 10th year of the war, running out of options, Mantle and Mistral launched a massive offensive to secure Vacuo once and for all. The Covenant Army met the Alliance in the Desert and in the final, bloodiest battle of the war, emerged triumphant.
In the aftermath of the war, Vacuo changed the least out of the Kingdoms. The lien was widely adopted currency, and the advent of the CCTS gradually spread the Valean language to all but its most isolated populations, but the 'Council' established by the Vytal Accords is a ceremonial government that controls a few of the blocks surrounding its headquarters on a good day. Power in Vacuo remains where it always has been- with the Arbiters, the Guilds, the Tribes, those with a swift sword and a silver tongue.
Due to the unstable nature of their culture, Vacuans are generally distrustful and strangers, and especially foreigners, but they are in many ways remarkably egalitarian. Humans and Faunus relations are fairly cordial- Vacuo's Faunus Rights Revolution was a non-event. Women have also had considerable cultural power for a very long time- Malik's Dynasty produced 2 Queens, and 'War Queen' Hypolita was by far the strongest Arbiter in recorded history. People who have been in the harsh land of the desert for months and those whose ancestors have walked it for millennia regularly cooperate for reciprical self interest- the backbone of Vacuan culture. Often described as a lawless society, Vacuans do obey one rule. One, single rule.
"If you can survive here... then you're welcome here."
The Chiefdom of Menagerie
Motto: "Diversity Is Our Strength"
Demonym: Menagerian*(formal but rarely used; either the generic 'Faunus' or specific tribe/clan is employed for most individuals and institutions)
Government: Tribal Confederation
Capital: Kuo Kuana
Key Dates
- Oldest Known Faunus Remains: c. 14,000
- Oldest Extent Clan (Sauria) Founded: April 11th, 2077 BGW
- Expulsion of Foreign Occupiers: February 14th, 8 GW
Population: ~22,000,000
-Density: ~152.5 per sq. mile
-Race: 1.4% Human, 98.6% Faunus
Land Area: 858,112 sq. miles (hypothetical), 144,281 sq. miles(actual)
Sphere of Influence: The island of Menagerie, the Faunus Diaspora(contested)
History: Long thought, with some evidence, to be the original homeland of the Faunus, Menagerie has been the heart of Faunus Civilization for as long as it has existed. Menagerie has been inhabited for at least 14,000 years, but the island is not particularly hospitable. A jungle peninsula on the northwest corner of the island has long been the most hospitable part of it, but over 2/3 of Menagerie is covered by harsh desert, with even more deadly (and generally poisonous) wildlife than the infamous Vacuan Desert. Faunus populations have always been concentrated near the coasts, where fishing and some limited agriculture (neither the climate nor Faunus nutritional needs were especially compatible with premodern farming) and rich hunting grounds could sustain comparatively larger numbers.
The Faunus have historically been very conscious of the cieling on their population, and took extensive measures to prevent regular Malthusian crises. Menagerie's Faunus, very early on, according to anthrpological research, organized themselves into tightnit family units, or clans. These clans often operated polygynously; mating rights were denied to most males, and even the Clan Chiefs were expected to regulate their apetites to prevent the clan from growing past its sustainable numbers. To ensure that other clans did not expand to give themselves a competitive advantage, Clan Chiefs in proximity to one another met regularly in clan superstructures, known as Tribes, and monitored the activities of their neighbors. Sanctions all the way up to extermination were on the table if one group decided to go against the grain. Clans and tribes often fueded and warred with one another, and there was great variation in both the internal structure of each clan and the power balance of various clans and tribes with one another. Many clans were patrilieneal and patriarchal, but some clans were matriarchal and matrillineal- some clans were highly polygnous, with only the Clan Chief permitted to mate, while others were strictly mongamous, and a small handful practiced polyandry- multiple males mated with each female so that only the stongest seed prevailed.
But, if the social structure could be generalized, Menegerie was broken up into clans, which sometimes coalesced into larger tribes, and even alliances between tribes, and these organizations regulated much of the reproductive lives of their members. Tribes, and especially Clans, were typically organized around a shared type. Because Faunus of two different types can produce any variety of Faunus, but two Faunus of the same type produce another Faunus of that type, infidely in monotype couples is often very easy to spot, so endogamy served as an early insurance against paternity fraud. This is one reason why 'purebloods', Faunus with two parents of the same type, were generally esteemed in Faunus culture. Sometimes Faunus would be members of a clan or tribe while not fitting the dominant type, but these members were often lower ranked and had limited opportunities within their group.
This naturally created a great deal of tension within Menagerie- especially among the young restless males, who were denied the opportunity to mate or rise in a strictly hierarchical, regimented system. This internal pressure was relieved by migration- bands of low status males poured out of Menagerie to the shores of every other inhabited continent in Remnant, spreading the Faunus diaspora everywhere they went, intermingling and fueding with the local Humans and creating their own cultures. Partly because of this convenient pressure vale, Menegerian society remained fairly stable for thousands of years- clans and tribes constantly rose and fell, but the overall structure held.
In the last millennia the technological and numerical edge of the Humans began to outstrip the physical advantages of the Faunus, and, gradually, the diaspora were brought to heel. By the 2nd century before the War, even Menagerie itself was under assault. The rugged, desert regions remained unconquered, but the verdant coasts were carved up between Vale, Mistral and Mantle during this period. Human conquerers also had little regard for the typical clan strictrues on mating, and regularly took Faunus concubines while on deployment, reversing the typical Human-Faunus gene flow to Menagerie rather than from it. The descendents of these 'Halfbreeds' would gradually organize themselves into clans as well, but their structure was generally looser, their rules laxer, and their culture more similar to the occupying Humans, with whom they traded and continued to mate. Still, even among the more 'humanized' tribes there was much resentment of their Human overlords, who often treated the Faunus under their dominion as pets at best and pests at worst.
However, by the time of the Great War, opportunity arose. The Vacuan Faunus Hypolita had allied herself with King Norman of Vale, and in 6 GW emissaries of the two approached the Tribes of Menagerie with an offer- open up a second front against Mistral and Mantle, and after the war Menagerie would be given back to the Faunus. Only a few clans began to rebel at first, with limited Covenant support, but throughout the later years of the war the movement snowballed, diverting more and more troops away from other fronts in a nightmarish quagmire, until the Alliance decided Menagerie was more trouble than it was worth and pulled their troops from the island on February 14th of the 8th year of the war. Menagerie made some contributions to the Covenant, continuing to harass Alliance vessels in the Sea of Varuna, but their main focus was on securing their permanent independence. Menagerie was invited to the Vytal Conference as a junior member, and, reluctantly, agreed to abide by the Accords in exchange for guaranteed independence. It proposed alliances with some of the other small, predominantly Faunus states scattered across Remnant, but those overtures were shot down by the major powers. Menagerie was not in anyone else's sphere on influence, but it was not to be permitted a sphere of its own.
The Chiefdom of Menagerie was formed from 497 constituent clans, organized into 39 tribes. The national government is democratic- clan chiefs elect a tribal chief to represent them on the Tribal Council, and the Tribal Council selects on of its own to serve as the Chieftain of Menagerie. The clan chiefs handled internal matters, disputes between clans were referred to the relevant tribe, and disputes between tribes and international affairs fell to the Chieftain and the Tribal Council. But there were some pecularities: some clans, particularly human influenced ones, elected clan chiefs, but traditionalist clans remained hereditary, Furthermore, Tribal Chiefs, as well as the Chieftain of Menagerie, were not subject to re-election and served for life. Finally, foriegn Faunus (often encouraged by their place of origin) began migrating to Menagerie in the post war era, and many of them were not integrated into tribes at all, meaning a significant share of the population had no representation in government at all, some portions of the country were effectively hereditary dictatorships and elections were rare and limited. Normally the Vytal Organization and its members would place extensive pressure on a state in flagrant violation of its democratic norms, but the unique optics of predominantly Human organization trying to snuff out traditional Faunus culture precluded that course of action.
These divisions produce considerable tension within Menagerie, however. Those who believe Menagerie is the rightful ruler and spokesman of all Faunus clash with those who want to keep to the island's own affairs. More liberal, coastal clans with heavy human influence and admixture lack the storied past of the great clans of old, but their contacts with Human culture gave them advantages in technology and trade, making them less politically powerful than the traditionalist clans but more economically powerful. Furthermore, tension between reformist and traditionalist members is present in every tribe and every clan to some extent- traditionalists claim that the Faunus fought to preserve their culture, while the reformists claim that 'the old ways' are holding Menagerie back and making its people suffer. Things like democracy, love marriage and more individualistic norms are hot button issues that divide family groups. Rivalries like the one between Clan Moksha and Clan Belladonna within Tribe Felidae are an especially infamous example... made somewhat personal by the fact that Kali Moksha, a high ranking member of the clan, refused an arranged marriage with the Moksha Chief to elope with Ghira Belladonna in the years after the Faunus Rights Revolution.
The Faunus Rights Revolution had a unique, unifying effect on the squabbling clans- while initially, some hoped all Faunus would return to the homeland, in the years after the way it became increasingly obvious that this was impossible: the island was too small and the diaspora too large. Furthermore, foreign Faunus were highly acculturated to their own homelands after spending centuries or even millennia there, and were often more similar to their Human neighbors than their Menagerian brethern, genetically and culturally. Few wanted to relocate to what they saw as a poor, backward, backwater, and difficulty integrating the Faunus who did migrate cooled enthusiasm for reunification. By the time the war broke out in 54 AGW, virtually all of Menagerie was unified in support of the rebels within the Kingdoms.
The Tribal Council rallied over 100,000 warriors to assist the rebellions, and Menagerie's government acted as a central command hub for the disparate Faunus militia. Several Menagerian Faunus helped found an internation faction- the Alliance of Free Faunus, to unify Faunus around the world under one banner. The Supreme Commander of this organization (which would eventually be repurposed into the peacetime White Fang) was initially Safed Khan, the White Tiger, father of future Supreme White Fang Supreme Leader Sienna Khan. Sienna's predecessor, Ghira Belladonna, served as one of his adjutants. The Belladonna Clan was especially liberal by Menagerie's standards and had close ties to the Human world- the clan chief's son, Ghira, had been sent to Atlesian Military School for a year during his 'rebellious teenage phase' Ghira's insight and experience made him a valuable asset- though in an advisory capacity, not a combat one. Ghira was, at that age, a militant Faunus Nationalist and deeply displeased at being denied the chance to fight, but he made many valuable contacts during this period- including the aforementioned Kali Moksha. Belladonna's attitudes towards Humans and war would shift after his experiences during the Solitan Campaign... particularly after the carnage at Fort Castle, which he witnesses firsthand. For the next two years, Ghira participated in negotiations with the Coalition of Kingdoms, and proved a talented diplomat. He also decided that war and violence would never produce lasting solutions to the Faunus's problems, and resolved to pursue non-violent methods to ease tensions and promote mutual recognition all of Humanity's shared rights and nature. To that end, when the AFF dissolved at the Revolution concluded, Ghira induced many of its members to form the White Fang.
While the Fang is now synonymous with violence, the name was chosen because a white fang was a fang unstained by blood. The White Fang advocated for better treatment of Faunus, even forcing concessions of out the SDC and other very powerful transnational corporations. While derided by some as a coward or a fool, Ghira's efforts did generate some results and won him the respect of the his fellow Faunus: when Chieftain Florian Linneaus passed away in 75 AGW, Ghira was selected to be his replacement. It was a fateful choice- Ghira stepped down as the Supreme Leader of the White Fang, and was replaced by Sienna Khan, whose militant 'security wing' had very different ideas about the role of violence in negotiations. Ghira would soon leave Menagerie with his wife and daughter to become 'Ambassador' to Vale, partly because diplomacy was his strong suit from the beginning, and partly because it gave him an excuse to put some distance between his impressionable daughter and the radicals who were quickly transforming the White Fang. Ghira remains the Chieftain of the island, voting by proxy on the Tribal Council.
Miscellaneous
Population: ~685,000,000
It is difficult to generalize about the conditions and culture of the outlands: they constitute the overwhelimg majority of Remnant's landmass and nearly half it's population. The outlands are nominally independent, but are functionally tied in various ways to the Kingdom whose sphere of influence they fall under. Many of them are large but very sparsely populated, while a few are basically city states. The most populous of all the outland states is Argus, with roughly 3 million people who live in its walls and 12 million within its metropolitan area. The largest state geographically is Themyscura, which occupies the entire southern coast of Orpheus but has is home to less than 1 million people. (Orpheus lacks any other states- the land is generally barren and inhospitable with the exception of the marshes of its southern shores, which are themselves not ideal for construction or habitation. Most cultures also believe the land itself is cursed, and even the most adventurous prospectors have found nothing valuable enough to justify transporting it on its blackened plains.)
Any efforts to consolidate smaller states into a larger, more powerful state, are frustrated by the Kingdoms. Argus could hypothetically become the core of a large state spanning much of Northern Anima, for example, but neither Mistral or Atlas would be willing to tolerate that. Many of the outland states have valuable resources or control strategic choke points that every Kingdom wants access to and no one wants in the hands of a rival power.
People Groups and Phenotypes
Humans
Humans, collectively known as Humanity, are a sapient species living on Remnant. Originally created by the Brother Gods Alder and Grimm as the culmination of both their gifts and ideals, ancient Humans flourished as the dominant species in the world of Oum until roughly 20,000 years before the Great War, when almost all Humans were annihilated by Grimm as punishment for Salem's uprising. Modern Humanity would emerge 'from dust' by the distant machinations of Alder and a handful of surviving ancient Humans, though this new iteration of Humanity would lack the capacity for most magic, though interbreeding between the newly created humans and the surviving original humans would eventually endow every human with the capacity to control their own aura and manifest a unique power known as a 'semblance'.
Badly weakened and few in number, Humans were no longer the dominant species, with the remnants of their civilization clustered in a few small strongholds, perpetually harassed by the Creatures of Grimm. The Faunus subspecies (expanded below) also emerged during this period. Roughly 2000 years ago, however, Humanity rallied and destroyed the Grimm in a generations long campaign. In the aftermath, fighting between aura wielding warlords without a common enemy grew so intense that in some areas they rivaled the Grimm in destructive capacity. In the internicene conflict between former allies, an aura condition known as 'The Bloodline Curse' emerged, rapidly spreading until it affected every Human on the planet. The Curse interfered with the passing of active aura from parent to child in a majority of cases, sealing away all but the aura a body naturally to maintain itself. This lead to a rapid shrinking of the 'Blessed' population- those Humans whose auras remained unsealed and largely unaffected by the curse. By the first millenia BGW aura and its users had passed into legend, and Human civilization began to take its modern shape. By the first century AGW, the global population had risen to 1.5 billion, and ~99.99975% of that population was permanently unable to access their aura.
Anatomy
Humans are a bipedal mammalian species with large brains and opposable thumbs. They are bipedal, warmblooded vertebrates with a body plan composed primarily of a head, a torso and 4 limbs, with most of the vital organs inside the torso, with the notable exception of the brain. The Faunus subspecies typically has an additional organ or characteristic derived from an animal species attached to this basic body plan. Humans are generally classified as primates, and are predominantly oriented around their sense of sight, although the Faunus subspecies generally possesses more acute senses of smell and hearing, and touch and taste are also prominent sources of information.
Humans are sexually dimorphic, with males typically being larger in height and weight than females. The average male within the Kingdoms is approximately 5'9 (175cm) tall, and the average female is 5'3.5 (161)cm tall with average weight being approximately 180lbs (82kg) and 150lbs (68kg) respectively.
Other variations between the sexes abound, males have much higher levels of hormones such as testosterone, while females tend to have elevated levels of estrogen and progesterone. Males have denser bones and broader shoulders as well as increased upper body musculature, with physically fit males having a 'v-shaped' torso. Females by contrast have wider hips more optimized for childbirth with higher levels of essential body fat, with fit females typically having an 'hourglass shaped' torso which flares out at the hips and breasts. Body fat levels vary greatly by lifestyle but males rarely dip below 3-5% of their total body mass comprising essential fat, and tend to store excess fat around the waist. Females typically keep 12% of their total body mass as essential fat and begin experiencing hormonal issues and infertility should body fat levels drop below 15-17%, with most subcutaneous fat deposited in the breasts, rear and thighs, though precise destinations vary based on age and hormone levels.
Human beings are omnivores, capable of eating animal and plant matter. They typically require a diverse diet to maintain their health, although various dietary restrictions have emerged in Human communities as a result of environmental availability and cultural taboos.
Life Cycle
Humans have a comparably long gestation period and childhood, with correspondingly high levels of parental investment and cultural infrastructure to support the rearing of children over decades. Human infants are typically born 9 months after conception and weigh between 5-7lbs (3-4kg), with a height of 20-24 inches(50-60kg). Sexual dimorphism is somewhat minimal in early childhood but manifests over the course of puberty, which typically begins for girls between 10-11 years of age and for boys between 11-12 years of age, with girls typically reaching full physical maturity between the ages of 15-17 years of age and boys at 16-18 years of age. Females typically reach their adult height by 14-15 years of age while males reach the adult height between 18-21 years of age.
Humans develop their considerable mental abilities across childhood. Toddlers typically developed mastery of objects, senses and basic motor control, while early childhood was spent acquiring language skills, basic social behavior and a sense of identity as well as some imaginative and creative abilities. Late childhood was spent developing more complex logical processes.
While technically possessing abstract reasoning and the ability reproduce as early as 12 years of age, most females have serious medical difficulties carrying a pregnancy to term until their mid teens, 15-16, and in traditional cultures a Human was not considered a full adult until between the ages of 14-16. In the post war era, this age of adulthood was pushed back even further until the late teens- Atlesian citizens are not considered competent to vote until 21, though in Mistral and Vale the voting age is 18. Enlistment in the armed forces is typically restricted to those above the ages of 18, though those as young as 16 are sometimes admitted for training.
Women typically experience a decline in their fertility after their late 30s and the median age of menopause is 51, though total infertility often emerges several years before menopause. A woman in Remnant was historically considered 'of childbearing age' between 15-45, though socio-economic and cultural pressures have stigmatized teenage pregnancy in the post war period. This process is notably delayed in Blessed and those with exceptionally powerful aura, which passively rejuvenates the user's body and slows the aging process after the early 20s, with edge cases having the bodies of a normal woman 10 years their junior. Men remain able to reproduce through their entire adult lives, though virility does gradually decline and advanced paternal age is associated with a higher risk of genetic abnormalities, though this effect is also delayed or diminished by active and/or powerful auras.
Humans age as result of copying errors during cell replication which accumulate across time until cell function begins to decay, until some vital body system ceases to function, resulting in death. Wrinkled skin, loss of hair color, more brittle bones and worn ligaments and joints are common symptoms of aging, and in some cases loss of memory or cognitive decline also takes place, though all these effects can be limited and slowed down by medical care and a healthy diet. Historically old age was considered to begin in either the a person's 50s or early 60s depending on cultural circumstance and harshness of living. Global life expectancy across time is difficult to estimate, as many people have been killed by Grimm or disease or war and for most of Remnant's history the child mortality rate was quite high, but as of 80 AGW the figure within the Kingdoms is roughly 75 years, with women living slightly longer than men across cultures and time periods. Less than 0.01% of Remnant's population survives to the age of 100 and the longest lived modern Human survived to the age of 124 years and 206 days.
Genetics, Heredity and Variation
Humans posses 46 chromosomes in 23 pairs, which code for all their biological traits, though the Faunus animalistic traits are not found in their genome, causing intense scientific speculation into their origin. Humans pass their genes on to their offspring via gametes, sperm for males and eggs for females. Sex is determined by the combination of X and Y chromosomes, with XX producing a female and XY producing a male; as all eggs carry an X chromosome sex is determined by the fertilizing sperm. Human males produce millions of sperm per day while females are born with a finite number of eggs which are released once per menstrual cycle, approximately once per month.
Humans share between 99.5-99.9% of their DNA with other members of the species, but still, there is considerable variation between individuals. Hair color and texture, as well as skin tone, bone structure and height varied greatly between individuals and historically isolated populations.
The Fitzpatrick Scale (Female)
The Fitzpatrick Scale (Male)
Skin tone varied heavily by ancestral climate- the native tribes of Solitas were exceptionally pale, being near exclusively type I on the Fitzpatrick scale, with some like the Icyni also having naturally white hair, with predominantly blue or green eyes. The inhabitants of Vale and Ilos as well as other people groups in the Northern reaches of Saunus and Anima, were also fair skinned, ranging from type I-II. These people generally had brown or even black hair, though blond and red were still fairly common, with blue and green eyes being present in anywhere from 10-33% of inhabitants. (This varied by territory- the coastal Fjordsmen of Anima and parts of Solitas being majority blond and redheaded, with Ilosians generally having darker black hair, and Valeans having various shades of blond brown- with plenty of variation within and admixture between these groups)
In the Eastern territory of Mistral, the people of the Heian region possessed a range of skin tones from II-IV roughly following a North-South axis, with straight black hair and an epicanthic fold and eyes that were typically brown (though the rare red or even pink were present). In the Western territory of Mistral, the people of Musea had tan, olive or 'mediterranean' skin and a wide variety of hair and eye colors: naturally various shades of brown, selective breeding and crossbreeding with other groups by high end slave merchants for unusual concubines produced novel shades green, blue, bright red, purple. These traits were sometimes mixed with other Mistrali subject groups to produce a wide variety of 'exotic' hair, eye and skin colors and combinations: although drawn from various historical populations and not a hard ethnic group in and of themselves, these 'exotic' types were sometimes referred to as 'The Vibranti' (Those of the vibrant color). Genetically the Museans were migrants to the region with admixture from Western, Northern and Central Anima. The people of Anima's interior and much of Southern Sanus were predominantly brown haired and brown eyed, with mediterranean to light brown skin tones, variations being somewhat correlated with local climate.
The hot and bright climate of Southern Anima led to most of its inhabitants (such as the Varun) having dark brown or black skin, and though black hair and brown eyes predominated some gene exchange with Musea and the Mistrali slave trade resulted in traits such as bleached blonde or dark green hair also emerging. The people of Vacuo and the surrounding desert were generally darker the longer they had been in the Kingdom- more recent migrants from regions with less UV radiation often rapidly tanned if they could once crossing into the desert, and the harsh climate selected for darker skin tones within hundreds of years, but the isolated migration patterns of nomadic tribes and the frequent flow of new Vacuans led to a very diverse range of appearances. Inhabitants of Menagerie and the far South also tended to have tan or brown skin and dark eyes, though in coastal areas with heavy trade and migration from the Northern Kingdoms this trend was not as prevalent. In the population exchanges leading up to and following the Great War, groups of people were brought in by force to other Kingdoms or migrated voluntarily, so these trends of origin only roughly correspond with modern loyalties and it is not uncommon for a descendent of old Vacuans to have been born and raised in Atlas, for example.
Aura is passed down from parent to child as well, in a less understood process (virtually unknown in the modern world), with the Aura Levels of children being highly correlated with the levels of their parents (though some random variation was observed). The passing of many aura traits (semblance predilections) was finnicky, but a handful of example traits were far more reliable: The Faunus Factor and the Bloodline Curse are virtually always passed from parent to child. Some family traits, such as the Arc Family Blessing and the Schnee Semblance, were also heritable (though each was only operable if the heir had an active aura and the former would dissipate without it).
The majority of adult humans are between 5-6 feet (152-183cm) tall, and the overwhelming majority were between 4'6 and 6'6 (approximately 1.4-2 meters tall), though individuals below 4 feet tall and above 7 feet tall are not unheard of. Weight varied not just by genes but by lifestyle, though Humans generally fell between 100-200 lbs. Below 75 and above 300 was extraordinarily rare, and approaching those extremes for most people indicated some serious health issues.
Behavior/Culture
Humans formed complex social bonds and economies in order to facilitate reproduction, survival and the production and distribution of goods. Humans are socially monogamous, often pairing up to share the burden of raising children. The family unit was highly prevalent in some form or another as the basis of social organization and alliances, typically a pairing between a biological mother and father and their immediate descendants, although wealthy men taking multiple wives was not unheard of, nor was cuckoldry. As males have a low cost of reproduction, they tend to be more eager to seek out multiple partners, although because they typically are expected to invest some resources they also are not indiscriminate and tend to seek out mates based on physical markers of health and fertility (often 'youth' and 'beauty'). Females have a comparatively high reproductive costs and need to pursue both the resources to raise an expensive child and the best genes to make that investment worthwhile- often these traits do not coincide in the same partner. Males would often trade economic support for exclusive sexual access to a partner, and complex legal systems as well as empathy and deceit are thought to emerge from this dynamic, but females would still sometimes cheat. Genetic studies within the Kingdoms suggest that between 5-12% of all children were fathered by someone other than the man on their birth certificate, and historical analysis indicates that only 1 man reproduced successfully for every 2 women that did so. Complex marriage practices and inheritance laws emerged across the Kingdoms to attempt to control for paternal insecurity, and selective female mating was often circumvented by capturing of war brides during raids between groups.
The constant pressure from the Creatures of Grimm led to many settlements being destroyed and many cultures lost, so only fragments of the pre-Kingdom histories are known to the survivors, but Humans have generally organized themselves around military leaders who could fight off the hordes of Grimm, and religious leaders who could calm their anxieties and soothe their grief. These settlements could be small outposts on the frontiers or Kingdoms composed of millions of people. Many early Human groups, particularly the Faunus subspecies, were nomadic hunter-gatherers, but for most of recent history most Humans have practiced some form of agriculture. Humans also possess strong in-group/out-group dynamics, identifying other people as allies or enemies based on shared interests or characteristics. The baseline Humans and Faunus subspecies have often clashed as a result of their visible phenotypic differences.
Humans possess complex language and symbolic communication, which is often used for artistic expression of emotions and complex ideas. During the lead up to the Great War large swaths of Remnant were culturally repressed, though this practice was rejected wholesale in the aftermath of Vale's victory in the war. Almost every living Human is connected to one another by the Cross Continental Transmit System, and most speak standard Valean, at least as a second language if not as a first.
Humans are diurnal and most human activity takes place during the day, although recent developments in electricity and lighting allow for more night time activity.
Most human technology is built around Dust , including weapons, industrial equipment, transportation and communication. Dust is so vital to Humankind's operation and survival that many mythologies claim Humans were born from dust (modern humans as a matter of fact were partially shaped by dust, which the surviving ancient humans used as an energy catalyst to mold the vaporized essences of those wiped out by Grimm into new Human forms).
Faunus (Human Subspecies)
The Faunus are a race of Humanity, distinguished from baseline humanity by the possession of some additional animalistic trait, ranging from another set of ears to antlers, to scales, to horns, to claws to tails. In addition to these traits, Faunus often possess sharper senses, with enhanced smell, hearing and night vision being somewhat common secondary characteristics.
History
Faunus emerged in Remnant sometime after the destruction of the original humanity, with many of their myths involving gifts from the God of Animals and the Island of Menagerie. While Menagerie was the first major Faunus population center, Faunus remains have been found in Anima as early as 14,000 BGW, while the eldest known settlement on Menagerie is 10,000 years old, though archeologists believe older sites do exist on the island's humid and more hospitable Eastern coast, where the population is centered to this day, with said sites having decayed beyond recognition.
The Faunus on Menagerie organized themselves into networks of clans and tribes that formed the basis of government, for that island, and typically had strict restrictions on mating rights and population growth. Faunus migrations occurred across Remnant between 10,000-1000 BGW, as population pressures led to outflow from Menagerie, particularly of lower status males who felt disenfranchised and disillusioned in the established order on the island. Faunus bands tended towards nomadic lifestyles as hunters and gathers- the increased tissue and sensory abilities of Faunus physiology require more calories and nutrients than a baseline human, and the nutrient poor diet of early, impoverished agriculturalists was a poor fit for them. As a result, ancient Faunus were much less densely populated than Humans but also tended to be healthier, larger and more robust. These Faunus noamds frequently came into contact with Human groups, often raiding settlements for manufactured goods and fertile women, greatly expanding their numbers but stoking racial tensions between the groups- while there is some evidence of co-operation, especially against the Grimm, generally Humans and Faunus regarded one another as enemies to be raided or even exterminated.
Faunus reached their high watermark as a share of the global population roughly 1000 years ago, right after aura had basically disappeared, taking with it the great physical eqaulizer: aura users from both groups were comparable in strength but the Faunus had a physical edge in many areas without them. The Faunus for centuries made inroads into traditionally Human lands, growing their numbers until they were roughly a third of the planet's population. This brief Golden Age was right before the Humans expanded their production and usage of dust. The Faunus share of the population would rapidly drop as the previously declining Humans rapidly expanded, and sedentary groups guarded their dust mines. As the modern Human Kingdoms arose, nearby Faunus were either expelled from the territory or integrated into the new political units as the lowest rung on the hierarchy, in a series of conflicts collectively known as the Feral Wars. Faunus were openly enslaved in most Kingdoms, though this practice was formally abolished in Vale in 207 BGW, and were put to work in highly dangerous positions such as volatile dust mines, or near undefended coasts regularly assaulted by pirates and privateers, or settled in the least desirable farm land. Faunus populations were segregated into ghettos away from the Human population and intermingling, particularly sexually, was strictly prohibited. This dynamic never properly calcified in Vacou however, where any central power that emerged was weak and short lived, so Faunus there tended to operate in their own independent tribes, as did most Humans, and when the Kingdom joined the Great War in 5 GW the Vacuan tribes elected a Faunus Chieftainess to act as their Arbiter and War Queen.
Menagerie itself was dominated by Humans beginning in the 2nd century BGW, with the fertile coast being carved up into zones of influence between Mantle, Mistral and Vale. As the Kingdoms seized dominion over most of the territory outside their borders, smaller Faunus settlements and bands fell under their sway. By the outbreak of The Great War. Faunus everywhere were subject to Human the subspecies accounted for less than 2% of the world's population.
During the Great War the Faunus population fought alongside Humans, and in recognition of their centuries of their subjugation they were awarded full citizenship within the Kingdoms of their birth in the Vytal Peace Accords. While populations outside the Kingdom's heartlands were devastated, those that survived were granted independence, and the Kingdoms recognized Menagerie as a politically independent homeland for the Faunus, re-establishing autonomous Faunus political units. The Faunus population grew even more rapidly than the Human population in the post war boom, and increasing anxiety about Faunus agitation and overpopulation led to a return to segregationist policies by many of the Kingdoms, sparking The Faunus Rights Revolution in the 50s AGW. Faunus would shock the world by co-ordinating their populations in each Kingdom to cripple international trade, and Faunus and Faunus Sympathetic Huntsmen would go toe to toe with their Human Chauvinist counterparts. Though the Faunus would ultimately win the war and secure continued political equality, many people within the Kingdoms were even more hostile towards the Faunus, whose victory they perceived as a serious threat to the continued dominance or even survival of Humans, and private discriminatory policies exploded in popularity. To ease tensions, veterans of the Revolution who were horrified at the loss of life on both sides founded The White Fang to act as diplomats and peaceful representatives of Faunus interests in disputes, though with the replacement of Ghira Belladonna by Sienna as High Leader of the Fang in 75 AGW the Fang itself became a more militant organization, with some branches operating as vigilante or terror cells in an unofficial war against Human authorities.
Politics and Culture
Faunus comprise less than 10% of the total population of Remnant and within the Kingdoms are often a marginal and distrusted minority, although within decentralized Vacuo entire tribes are often exclusively Faunus. Within the Outlands beyond the Kingdoms Faunus compose roughly 25% of the total population, as Faunus are more likely to forsake the Kingdoms for political equality or even supremacy and independence, and the Island of Menagerie is nearly uniformly Faunus. Menagerie has long acted as a cultural and political hub of the Faunus, though most of the diaspora, which greatly outnumbers the Menagerie natives, are assimilated into the culture of their native Kingdom.
Faunus have traditionally divided themselves into extended family groups known as clans, based around a widely shared animal trait. Tribes were organized along broader lines- a clan of predominantly tiger Faunus and a clan of predominantly lion Faunus would likely be organized under a broader umbrella of a cat Tribe, for example. Within traditional clans and tribes preserving the shared general type was prized as a tool for maintaining tribal and clan unity and identity, with say, a goat Faunus being born into a predominantly cat clan occupying a much lower rung of that clan's hierarchy. These clans historically had institutionalized polygamy, with high ranking chiefs taking several wives, though in modern times only the more traditionalist clans continue that practice. Familial tribes and clans to this day make up the basic political units of Menagerie, with a tribal council electing the Chieftain of Menagerie, and clans governing most of their own internal affairs. Clans can either be matrilineal or patrilineal, and have widely different customs and laws, but are generally given leeway to rule their own members, with the wider government of Menagerie only arbitrating disputes between different clans.
Faunus military groups have traditionally been organized into 'war bands', with bands of increasing size being led by 'war chiefs' of increasing importance. During The Faunus Rights Revolution these units were somewhat standardized and placed under a central command, though bands were still typically organized by and attached to the tribes, and diaspora volunteering for the regular army were attached to pre-existing clan. 'Chief' is also a generic title given to high ranking members of a clan hiearchy, with 'Clan Chief' or 'Tribal Chief' distingushing more permanent leaders of family groups.
This clan structure has largely dissolved outside of Menagerie- boundaries between Faunus types were more fluid in the smaller nomadic bands of the mainland and centuries of living under Human rule dissolved what pre-existing Faunus political structures did exist. Most Faunus within the Kingdoms have either assimilated completely into Human culture or practice a caricature of what the old ways might have been.
Traits and Heredity
Most Faunus possess additional traits derived from mammals. Those deriving from reptiles, amphibians, birds or fish are increasingly rare respectively, though those traits do express themselves in tens of thousands to millions of Faunus.
Faunus parents of disparate animal types can produce any variant of Faunus child, even if it is as radically different as say, a Cat Faunus and a Lizard Faunus producing an Eagle Faunus. Virtually every child of a Faunus will be a Faunus, even with a baseline Human as a biological parent, though a handful of reported exceptions are recorded in Human history.
Genetically and phenotypically (outside of their animal derived trait) most Faunus resemble the human populations they live near, a testament to millennia of one-sided gene flow. Most modern Faunus share certain gene markers indicating an ancestral population from Mengarie which migrated in waves over thousands of years.
The Princely House of Arc (Human Lineage)
'The Princely House of Arc' was the 13th and youngest of the Princely Houses of Vale, and not to be confused with the Line of True Arcs, from which it was derived but which pre-dated it by several centuries and continues on after its dissolution.
The Arcs ancestors had been living in the land of Vale since time immemorial. True Arcs had spread as far as Mistral and one very nearly co-opted the Jade Throne in the 580s BGW, but his efforts were foiled and have been credited with codifying the penalty for corruption of a royal concubine: death for the seducer and seduced as well as all known male relatives of the offender. True Arcs were more successful cuckolding their way into prominent noble lines in their homeland, however, though the effects of the Bloodline Curse and the rules of primogeniture meant they rarely held a fief for more than a few generations at a time. Only nobles had formal surnames during this period, and with the high frequency of illegitimate sons inheriting the Arc Blessing it can be difficult to track individual ancestors during this period. True Arcs rarely advertised their status and knowledge of their history and powers was a closely guarded secret. The Arcs would only partially come out into the open during the end of Valean Unification, as a noble line in their own right.
The fief of Orleans was an epicenter of True Arc activity for much of the last milennium, and by the time of the Valean Feral Wars a peasant child who would later christen himself 'Arc I' was born within its orders. The Faunus tribes of the region had been pushed out of their traditional territories by the expanding Kingdom of Vale, but their displaced and disparate factions were unified under the legendary Beast King, a warlord of great skill who eventually became an existential threat to the young Kingdom. After several crushing defeats, the nobility of Vale was rescued by a sellsword from the fief of Orleans; when Arc I singlehandedly rallied the Valean army and routed the Faunus hordes of the Beast King on Galicia Field they offered him a knighthood and when he did it again at the Battle of Aurora Creek they faced the real danger that he might turn his growing following on them. In 322 BGW the Princely Council of Vale admitted House Arc into its ranks as its 13th and final member, and the only Princely House not to predate the Kingdom's founding.
The Northern coast and fields of Vale, which had been near totally depopulated during the final Valean Feral Wars, were awarded to House Arc for its service and reorganized into what would become Arcadia Province. Rather than heeding calls for their extermination, Arc I spared his former foes, who became his vassals, and many of the surviving Faunus from the war were settled within his territory, though Humans recolonization was encouraged and Faunus were placed under heavier restrictions and in settled in less defensible locations. The rents from these serfs and later sharecroppers would form the backbone of the Arc Family's wealth, allowing the family to shift its attention to the military and political realms.
While the Arcs would not achieve unbridled domination of Vale and then the world, they would become crucial players in its internal power struggles and leaders of its military efforts. The first three Princes of the House were all True Arcs, a string of good luck that would not be matched again in the House's history. Lucian Arc, the house's 3rd Patriarch, would play a decisive role in the Destruction of Ilos, but for several generations after him the True Line and the Princely Line diverged, with the Blessing migrating to cadet branches of the family, only occasionally jumping back into the purple.
Claude (the 5th Patriarch), also known as Claude the Lame, was a mundane, physically infirm yet extremely scholarly Arc who would spearhead the push for liberal reform and was one of the authors of the Civic Charter, abolishing slavery, standardizing law codes laying the groundwork for the modern provincial system. He also established early centers of education such as Ansel College within the provincial seat of Arcadia, the oldest college in Vale. While Claude would never sit on the Laurel Throne, he would garner enough clout on the Princely Council to elevate his son August to the purple in 174 BGW, shortly before his death. For his troubles, one of his True Arc cousins would cuckold his son, bringing the Blessed Line back into the line of succession.
During the era of the Warring Kingdoms after first contact with Mantle and Mistral many scions of House Arc and its cadet lines would die young in military campaigns across the globe, from Mantle to Menagerie. The True Arcs survived this period by spreading their seed generously, both at home at abroad. By 30 BGW the Arcs were able to once again maneuver one of their members to the Kingship, a True Arc this time, named Domitian. Domitian seemed poised to remake Valean society to ensure a lasting dynasty of True Arcs who could openly rule and do as they pleased, but his own son and heir, Norman Arc, ultimately proved to be his downfall. Norman would take the throne after asssassinating his father in a conspiracy with powerful Valean Nobles. Deciding that the mindset and behavior induced by the Blessing was more a curse on the world than anything else, Norman took an oath of celibacy after reaching the Laurel Throne, dedicating his life to the service of the Kingdom. Norman would go on to become better known by the honorific 'Valerian', and which Princely House he originally belonged to became a piece of trivia only a few historians would remember.
Like many other Noble Houses, House Arc was devastated by the Great War- Noble Sons were disproportinately sent to the front lines as military commanders- the entire basis of fuedal nobility was military service, after all, and the aristocratic class in all Kingdoms lost a majority of their heirs in the fighting. Furthermore, partly as a result of Norman's own ideology and influence, the old monarchic, aristocratic and fuedal systems were held by many to be the cause of the Great War, and the Nobles were compelled by popular outrage and their own weakness to vacate their own positions and surrender most of their fuedal possessions to their former vassals. Partly for their own protection, many would be heirs deliberately obfuscated their heritage: this was fairly easy, as each 'Noble' line had countless cadets with the same last name, and many peasants took place names derived from their province, which was often named after the ruling family. Arcs were especially fecund due to the influence of the True Arcs, and some of their bastards formally or informally adopted their father's name. Arc, or some variation of it, is a semi-common surname in Vale, the 305th most common as of 75 AGW and the 99th most common in Arcadia Province (unsurprisingly).
With the abolition of the fuedal system in 1 AGW, House Arc formally came to an end.
Historical Heads of the Family (True Arcs notated in Bold)
Arc I (1st) (358 - 294 BGW)
Roland ( 320 - 277 BGW)
Lucian ( 298 - 269 BGW)
Louis (271- 230 BGW)
Claude( 252 - 171 BGW)
August ( 220 - 166 BGW) (King of Vale from 174-166 BGW)
Francois ( 204-187 BGW)
Edward (189 -168 BGW)
Noah II (173 - 130 BGW)
Perseus (150 - 89 BGW)
Alexander (129 - 98 BGW)
Antione (112 - 54 BGW)
Hadrian (84-27 BGW)
Domitian (69 BGW- 24 BGW)(41st King of Vale; reigned from 30 BGW to 24 BGW [6 years]
Norman/Valerian (40 BGW- 12 AGW) (42nd King of Vale; reigned from 24 BGW to 10 GW[34 years]
However, despite Norman's vow, this was not the end of the True Arcs. Before he resolved to live a life of aesthetic service, Norman had several flings with local girls, some of whom he lost track of. One girl, Sarah, would bear a child name Aaron, born in obscurity days after his father took the throne. As a bastard, Aaron was out of the line of succession, and as the entire concept of nobility collapsed before his father's death it is moot point anyway, but as the biological son of the last Arc Prince and a bearer of the Arc Family Blessing to boot, Aaron's line represents the closest thing there is to a continuation of the Princely House of Arc (a fact his mother shared on her deathbed and something he kept very, very quiet). Aaron would later go on to distinguish himself for his valor in the Great War, fathering his own heir while on leave, before coming back, laying down his sword and swearing to sow his wild oats in the peace, like any proper Arc would.
Aaron (24BGW- 24AGW)
Simon(5 GW-45 AGW)
Julian(15 AGW- 40 AGW)
Mason(31 AGW-Present)
Jaune(63 AGW-Present)